Wildlife ponds by nature can get extremely dirty very quickly. This Wildlife pond in Withington had sprung a leak in the old pond liner so we were called in to clean out the pond and replace the liner. This pond was for wildlife only so there were no fish.
Cleaning a Wildlife Pond
Cleaning wildlife ponds can be somewhat difficult. This is because most people with wildlife ponds will not have pond filters or any moving water. Pond filters should be installed in all types of ponds as it creates water movement, aerates the water and also filters it. When these ponds dont have water movement or filtration they become very dirty very quick. The first thing you have to do when cleaning a wild life pond is to carefully remove all the wildlife. This can be difficult when newts love to live in the mud and in every nook and cranny!
Once the live stock was out of the pond, it was time to get knee deep in sludge. We removed all the larger pebbles saving them for later on and removed all the smaller stone, sand and mud by hand. Coping stone removed ready for the new pond liner.
Installing a new Firestone EPDM rubber pond liner
Now that the sludge and debris were out of the pond, we folded the old liner up and removed for waste. We brushed out any stones or twigs that had fallen in so there were nothing sharp in the pond. A pond grade underlay was installed securely so it didn’t move when the liner was being put into position. Pond grade underlay is much better than carpet as it doesn’t rot and degrade over time.
We rolled out the new Firestone 1mm rubber pond liner so it made it easier to install, rubber liners are heavy so this was a 3 man job. Once in position we filled in the center section pulling out any creases that had formed. The large pebbles were cleaned off and re positioned around the shallower section of the pond. We filled up the pond again, pulling out the creases and re positioned the stone at the back which hid the exposed liner.
With the pond being full, and the treatments all put in we could now re introduce the wildlife we had removed, we found lots of frogs and plenty of frog spawn.
If you would like to know in more detail on how to install a pond liner, check out our other article here.
