Need some help with giving my pond a makeover

[SusieG]

The easiest way is to use a submersible pump or a pond vac, you can just switch it on & leave it to it. Yes, you can put the bottom debris onto your compost heap.............If you are going to empty it by hand, it may be beneficial to save the water as plants will love it.

Cheers BM! Food for thought there..!
A pond vac ....... sounds promising ..... Could save the water, would need to get a butt.....

[Bigmallly]

Cheers BM! Food for thought there..!
A pond vac ....... sounds promising ..... Could save the water, would need to get a butt.....

I have a pond vac, it has 2 hoses, what it does is sucks up the muck till the vac if full then automatically discharges the dirty water through the second hose to wherever you want it.

Edit: If you are thinking about using it to fill a water butt, the vac will need to be higher than the butt as it discharges by gravity.

[Jungle Jane]

What about filling completely with soil,so you can plant around the edge of the newly created pond that's in the middle. Then plants on the edge can spill out over the brickwork & you could use annuals with lots of flowers,petunias & fushia trailing over,like a little border around the pond. Then make a new little pond in the middle with a marginal shelf for water plants? if it's a well that's been capped,do you need to be careful of weight?

[Scarlet]

We have a water pump Susie...but when it got to to the bottom there was so much sludge we had to use buckets.

JJ, I love that idea..I'm also worried about weight. I didn't like the OH standing in there

[veggiechicken]

I know this isn't what you want, but I've seen a well covered with toughened glass. There were lights set into the sides of the well, below the glass and ferns grew in there. It looked quite magical!
You could go to see it yourself - its in the side bar of the Beaufort Arms in Hawkesbury Upton, Glos. Foods good there too
Apparently, many of the old houses in the village had internal wells which were used until a cholera or was it a typhoid outbreak..............just saying

[Scarlet]

Might be worth a trip out VC...my birthday soon

[veggiechicken]

Haven't been there for some years, Scarlet, but I was a regular there at one time! My ancestors (back to the 1600s) were farmers in the village and nearby so I ued to meet up with other local history enthusiasts there.

[Stan79]

My tuppence worth:

Knock the top foot or so off the sides to lower the overall height and make it more of a pond and less of a... well, well!

Fill it with a foot or two of the rubble, blind that over with sand, lay a membrane, lap the membrane up over the reduced height sides and then cap the top of the wall with a thin course of bricks to hold the membrane in place. Break up a foot wide strip all the way around the well wall and make a flower border.

Or... an elaboration on Jungle Jane's idea... Create a wooden frame with marine ply sides that will fit inside the well whilst leaving an inch or two's gap around the side. Fill the gap with soil as JJ suggests so you have a planting medium around the edge to hang down over the well wall sides and soften it a bit. Line the wooden frame with pond liner.

I'm intrigued to know why it was leaking? Whas it leaking out of the sides or has a crack formed in the base? To me, that is clearly a well and i wouldn't be standing in it!!! If there's a crack on the base or water is leaking through the base in some other way, you could fill the bottom foot or so with hardcore and pour a load of concrete over the top to:
a) fix the leak
b) decrease the overall depth
c) help block it up in the event anyone else decides to stand in it in the future!

[Bal]

OH has built many a pond (so he says). He always uses pond matting (ecotextile membrane) under the liner instead of sand. It doesn't get dislodged when you try and put the liner down, and will line any ledges properly. He also then uses it over the liner to protect it from stones and stuff. It also allows plants to grow into it and soften the edges so you don't need to put stones on the edges to hide the liner.