Yet another week has passed since the last blog update and we've certainly seen some changes in and around the pond. I don't know if there's something in the air (perhaps it's the glue vapours) but we seem to have shifted up a gear and have made considerable progress in the last week as follows :-

First thing to report is ..... the window's in! Gaz who completed the block work for us came round last Thursday evening to give us a hand putting the window in (no it's not Gaz in the picture).The water used to combat the ballooning bottom was drained during the day so it didn't take us long to fit the window once we'd started.

We also finally fit the aerated bottom drain. At this juncture, and after months of planning and building, we finally turned on the tap to begin filling our pond through a flow meter so we'd have an accurate figure at the end of filling of the overall pond volume.

The first job on Friday was to turn the water back on in order to continue filling the pond. We'd turned it off the night before as we wanted to present just in case something happened. After then purchasing more bits & bobs first thing Friday, the rest of the day was spent finalising and titivating the plumbing for the filter system, whilst all the time the water level in the pond slowly increased. We also switched filling position from the main pond to the header pond which when full, would flow into and fill the main pond anyway. At 11.10 pm we'd reached maximum levels in both the header pond and the main pond!

 Saturday morning and we were eager to get out into the garden and take stock of the situation in day light. We weren't disappointed! In our opinion, all the hard work, ups & downs, time and effort we'd put in to reach this point had finally all been worth it! It was now time to open up all the valves and fill the filter system so that we could then have one final top-up and achieve total pond volume. It wasn't long before this was achieved and ...... 19,640 litres or 4,320 gallons !!!

We also started the pumps up on the filter system but unfortunately had a few leaks and drips which form our list of first fixes.

We've still got a chunk of work to complete to finalise the actual pond building stage such as laying the facing bricks and applying the render where it's required, after which we'll then be able to apply the coping stones to finish off the pond and complete our pond build.