DIY Thread - Let's see your "Inventions".

[perchie.girl]

We are trying to do a less than hideous yet still muscovy-talon safe pond for our future ducks, so we sandwiched a craigslisted preformed pond liner with 1/4" plastic (to make it rigid) and drilled a hole and installed a shower drain on it. The sealant is still curing, but I should be able to get it in the ground next week!

I love this idea of reinforcement Did you us ABS for the reinforcing plastic? Thats usually what those ponds are made of.

I take it pond liners are a No No for Muscovies.... I have a huge one that needs a job and was thinking of it for ducks.

deb

 

[LaurelC]

I love this idea of reinforcement Did you us ABS for the reinforcing plastic? Thats usually what those ponds are made of.

I take it pond liners are a No No for Muscovies.... I have a huge one that needs a job and was thinking of it for ducks.

deb

Honestly, I haven't heard of them scratching through the soft ones, but I am imagining that they would. There aren't many people out there that seem to put a lot of effort into having something other than a kiddie pool, and none of the people I've seen with the flexible liners have muscovies. I'm more concerned with putting the effort and money into making a really nice pond out of a flexible liner and then having one of the scovy talons punch right through it.

Based on my research, the preformed pond liners are usually made of HDPE, which is difficult to glue to (details are here http://www.homeindisarray.com/2014/03/a-little-bit-of-progress-on-duckingham.html) but I figured I'd probably do better gluing to similar materials, so I picked up 2x 1/4" sheets of black HDPE at TAP plastics ( http://www.tapplastics.com/ ) for $12 and used a special HDPE adhesive. I'd say all-in-all, it's going to have run me about $100, including the $50 for the liner. I probably could have done it for a little cheaper, but I don't want to redo this.

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote: I do know they make drains for liners.... but I like yours better. OK I have made some assumptions lately I need to readjust my thinking.... Twice now I have mistaken HDPE for ABS or recycled rubber products. Nice part about having that glue though is you can use it on a number of projects involving HDPE. My source locally is Ridout plastics. I have a project in the planning stages for Grey water. 55 gallon drums are made of HDPE.

I have to take a look to see if my pond liner is HDPE as well. hMMM.... Food for thought.

deb

 

[aart]

I do know they make drains for liners.... but I like yours better. OK I have made some assumptions lately I need to readjust my thinking.... Twice now I have mistaken HDPE for ABS or recycled rubber products. Nice part about having that glue though is you can use it on a number of projects involving HDPE. My source locally is Ridout plastics. I have a project in the planning stages for Grey water. 55 gallon drums are made of HDPE.

I have to take a look to see if my pond liner is HDPE as well. hMMM.... Food for thought.

deb

Most of the thicker pond liners are edpm rubber, same as rubber membrane roofing materials....there are some thinner poly-xxx type liners....you can get 'pond' liner alot cheaper if you buy the roof material, as long as it's not anti algaae/fungus treated

I did a long stint researching ponds and built a water garden.
Used to run a plastic extrusion machines LDPE, HDPE, vinyls, styrene.....used to be able to tell them apart 'using the tooth'.

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote: The last time I had anything to do with plastics tooling was for injection molding. High Impact Polystyrene. Dad used to design for pulltrusion machines with imbeded fiber glass.

Here is a site I found on my search for HDPE pond liners....

http://www.poly-flex.com/products.html

I am sure the old pond liner I have is edpm.... I will look up the roofing materials. There is a place in town that sells discount plywood for roofers but they also carry all the other supplies. Were talking almost 50 percent savings over retail.... and they sell retail too for just a teeny bit more.

deb

 

[aart]

That link is the thinner stuff......
Be careful when looking at the roofing materials, well maybe it doesn't matter for ducks, but for koi and goldfish the roofing stuff can be treated and it will kill fish pronto.

 

[Blooie]

Based on my research, the preformed pond liners are usually made of HDPE, which is difficult to glue to (details are here http://www.homeindisarray.com/2014/03/a-little-bit-of-progress-on-duckingham.html) but I figured I'd probably do better gluing to similar materials, so I picked up 2x 1/4" sheets of black HDPE at TAP plastics ( http://www.tapplastics.com/ ) for $12 and used a special HDPE adhesive. I'd say all-in-all, it's going to have run me about $100, including the $50 for the liner. I probably could have done it for a little cheaper, but I don't want to redo this.

There is also a product for ponds which works similarly to that Great Stuff spray on insulation. It's called Waterfall Foam Sealant. It's used for adhering large rocks and stones to pond liners or pre-fab ponds. We used it in our pond to hold rocks in place that our waterfall would have knocked down into the pond and it held through 5 winters....it was still holding well when we took the pond out last summer. It's really adhesive, and made to make sure that what it was sprayed onto STAYED sprayed and held. It was also non-toxic to our Koi, and they can be very sensitive to chemicals. We would keep the pond running all year in our frigid Wyoming Winters with a simple stock pond heater, and not even ice or temperature changes affected the seals. Wild birds used the water in the pond all year round for drinking with no effect. Good stuff. Maybe that would work for putting that type of drain in a pre-fab pond....unless I missed the whole point of the posts because I lost track of what I was talking about. <sigh> Been that kinda day. If that's the case, please feel free to disregard this post.

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote: LOL.... I followed you Blooie.... No ducking and hiding here....

deb

 

[Blooie]

LOL.... I followed you Blooie.... No ducking and hiding here....

deb

Whew! I was worried about me for a minute there!

 

[aart]

There is also a product for ponds which works similarly to that Great Stuff spray on insulation. It's called Waterfall Foam Sealant. It's used for adhering large rocks and stones to pond liners or pre-fab ponds. We used it in our pond to hold rocks in place that our waterfall would have knocked down into the pond and it held through 5 winters....it was still holding well when we took the pond out last summer. It's really adhesive, and made to make sure that what it was sprayed onto STAYED sprayed and held. It was also non-toxic to our Koi, and they can be very sensitive to chemicals. We would keep the pond running all year in our frigid Wyoming Winters with a simple stock pond heater, and not even ice or temperature changes affected the seals. Wild birds used the water in the pond all year round for drinking with no effect. Good stuff. Maybe that would work for putting that type of drain in a pre-fab pond....unless I missed the whole point of the posts because I lost track of what I was talking about. <sigh> Been that kinda day. If that's the case, please feel free to disregard this post.

I think that stuff actually is Great Stuff brand...it's just black......and priced for pond folk.