After building a small water garden at their house in Tampa, FL, we quickly decided that we wanted a much bigger pond with koi. We've spent some time over past six years in GA going to pond shops, dealers, and koi shows learning everything we could. We finally hired Allgood Outdoors from Wakoola Water Gardens to create a design for us which is shown below. We'll keep this page updated with our progress.
NOTE - We've decided not to pursue the koi pond now and invest in real estate. Keeping these pages for a future project!
| July 7, 2005 | Documented initial design notes. |
| September 17, 2005 | We attended the 2005 Atlanta Koi Show this weekend and saw some great looking (and $$$) Koi. Spent a lot of time the past few weeks learning about and designing various filtration systems. Currently leaning towards products by Evolution Aqua, a UK company. On Saturday, Cla Allgood (owner of Allgood Outdoors) and Trevor Hendersen (owner of PondWise in Alabama and US distributor for Evolution Aqua) came to our house to discuss plans for the filtration system. |
| September 28, 2005 | We've had slow progress the past few months as Allgood Outdoors completes other clients' projects. We've decided on Evolution Aqua's "Nexus 300 Eazy" system. We'll need 2 of them for a pond of 10,000 gallons, as well as a "Pond Sieve" for the skimmer. These systems are gravity fed through a 4" pipe, so they need to be at water height in a "filtration pit". We came up with ideas and design specifications for both the filtration system and the filtration pit to incorporate within the overall design. Next should be a final design meeting in early October and then hopefully break ground in December. |
| October 12, 2005 | We met with Cla Allgood and our landscape designer today. We've made lots of progress and are really close to a final plan. We added a disappearing fountain (closed system) for a focal point across the pond, and we are still planning on an upflow bog that will be fed with clean water after the Nexus. The bog's really a bit of an experiment to see how it works, but it is entirely bypassable so we can shut it off if it doesn't work or is too much maintenance. The bridges over the pond will be large "crab orchard" stone blocks. Filtration equipment will be in a pit covered with a shed. Finally, we are diverting some of the waterfall through a stream to bring water closer to the patio behind the house. Primary items remaining are individual planting details and overall design of the deck and filtration shed. |
| December 2005 | Well, we got all the way to the end of design and at the last minute decided to pull the plug on this project. We'd still REALLY like to do a koi pond and perhaps someday we'll get around to it. For now though, we decided to invest in real estate on Lake Hartwell. Look for pictures in the Photo Gallery. |
