Oh, thank you Deanna. I'm much more likely to get around to cleaning it now.

I copied the design from a book :)
It's the easiest design there is- it's just a giant rectangle. We let the size of the liner dictate the width: The liner came in fifteen foot widths, so we made the pond eight feet wide (with three feet to go up each side and a little for slop).

We dug it three feet deep at one end and two and a half at the other end. You can make it as long as you like (in our case, as long as we could afford for liner). We lined the inside of the rubber liner with cinderblocks and then used fake Eldorado stone to surface it.

We build the little raised well at the end from cinderblocks and faced it with the same Eldorado fake rock. Then we sealed the little well with Thoroseal, and I used a concrete cast leaf for the spillway.

All we have running it is one 550 GPH pump which sits at one end of the big pond and feeds water up through a plastic tube into the cast iron water pump. That empties into the well, and spills over the cast leaf.

If I had more money when we built it, I would have put in a bottom drain, a skimmer, and a biofilter. Now I just pump out the sludge with a sump pump once a year. It has a delightful odor, and stains nicely too.

The goldfish do just fine, but you could not keep koi in it. I built it for the plants.

We are in the process of connecting the pond visually with my swimming pool (4x7 feet) at the other end of the backyard with some little plastic kidney-shaped preformed ponds. I don't do anything for those- just throw in a few mosquito fish and some plants and drain once a year or so.

Renee the lazy ponder

Thank you! Showed it to husband, he loves it. If we can go ahead with something similar, I may have a couple more questions in the future. It's just gorgeous and creates such a wonderful effect!

So, to be clear, that raised well isn't truly tapped into a water source underground, it's just the housing for the pump?

You've given me great hope. If that can be accomplished with laziness, I shall pledge to do a half-a*& job and get something perhaps even nicer, because I think half-a*& requires just a bit more work than lazy. Oh, the possibilities, so much to "ponder!"

Oh, I just crack at least myself up sometimes!

Groan.
Yes, the "well" is just a settling tank for the pond scum. The pump is actually down in the lower big part, it pumps the water out in a plastic pipe that is hidden by plants, up the back of the "well" and into that cast iron pump from China that cost 29.99 on Ebay.

Renee, still cracking up at how you crack yourself up