DIY Big Pond Construction—the First Crucial Steps of Excavating a Pond

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Ingenious and Intriguing Industrial and Manufacturing Blogs

If you work in the manufacturing industry, you may need a few tips to make your job more efficient. Similarly, if you are a consumer of industrial items, you may also want some buying ideas, safety tips, product comparisons and more. Hello. My name is Dorothy Lee, and this niche fascinates me, so I decided to start a blog about it. I hope to answer your most important questions and possibly even answer some questions you didn't know you had. I am mum and a freelance writer, and I have one daughter who recently started uni. I love to research a range of things and pull from my own experiences to create unique blogs that will appeal to a range of different people.

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DIY Big Pond Construction—the First Crucial Steps of Excavating a Pond

12 August 2016
 Categories: Industrial & Manufacturing, Blog


If you've finally decided to take the plunge and construct a big pond in your back garden, read on. There are numerous reasons to do the work yourself. The most common reasons are saving money and job satisfaction. Whatever your motivation, you should know that it's not going to be the easiest job to undertake. However, with the right tools, determination, and this guide on getting started, it's certainly achievable.  

Start at the Very Beginning

Before you begin excavating your pond, you'll need to know exactly where your underground services are located. Hitting a sewage or water pipe while digging could result in an expensive and messy clean-up; hitting electrical cables could result in death. If you don't have access to plans that tell you where your underground services are, take the time to contact your service providers, who should be able to give you exact locations.

When you know where it's safe to dig, you should create a detailed plan that you can follow. Your plan should include the shape and size of your pond. If you want to have planting shelves, you should decide on where you'll locate them now and add them to the plan. When your plan is complete, you'll need to map out the shape on the ground using marker flags.

Dig Dig Dig

So, you know where you're digging and the dimensions of your pond—what next? While digging a hole seems easy enough in theory, the ease factor will depend on the size of the hole you need to dig.

You could dig your pond manually, regardless of the size, but do you really want to when there are tools you can hire for jobs like this? Bobcat hire may be your ideal solution. These ingenious little machines can save you weeks of digging, and months spent repairing a damaged back. Hiring a digger may add to the budget, but will ultimately be cheaper than the cost of the physio you may end up needing if you dig it by hand.

Follow these three tips before you begin:

  1. Speak to the rental company and explain just what you need to do, so they can advise you on what size machine and excavator bucket you'll need to get the job done quickly. 
  2. Make sure you read the operating manual thoroughly and give yourself some time to practice operating the digger.
  3. Make sure you've thought about where the soil you excavate will go. If you're hiring a skip, you can ask for it to be situated close enough for the bobcat's arm to reach. 

If you've followed these tips correctly, you should now be ready to begin that first crucial stage safely. You'll be sitting by your pond watching the wildlife it attracts before too long.