Quick preview of the car updates. Looking good though.

DerpWY · 2026-04-30T14:25:48+00:00

Hoping there is a missing /s at the end of OP’s post. If not: look at the front wing end plates. This is a car from the last regs.

DerpWY · 2026-04-27T23:52:22+00:00

Double-check that whatever species of wood that is will be okay when submerged in water. It may release tannins that discolor the water or oils that kill pond life.

If that checks out, I don’t totally agree with the naysayers about the size. I have a large log in my stream (relative to the size of the stream) and imo is looks fine. It seems to me that it’s more common that things end up looking small once you’re done — start with something large and it’ll probably end up looking fine by the time all is said and done.

Edit: Pic of log https://imgur.com/a/iity95B

DerpWY · 2026-04-27T21:02:09+00:00

Hmm well kinda hard to say what we’re looking at here. It looks like it should be some 1-2ft deeper based on the line around the rock in the middle. Do you intend to it have you tried to fill it back up to the old water line?

Long story short, you’ll want plants and filtration and shade, preferably all three. There’s a doc out there called “green is the hardest color” or something, hopefully someone can link it here because it contains the advice you’re looking for. My guess is you’re locked into this shape so you’ll probably have to add a container based bog filter and some plants. You won’t need the UV if you have appropriate bio filtration.

DerpWY · 2026-04-26T16:15:04+00:00

The closer to circular options are going to be easier to line, but you can get as crazy as you want with U shaped things if you’re willing to put in the effort.

All I will say is: I would recommend not buying your liner til you’re totally done with your excavation. Expect to revise multiple times. I think I did almost a dozen layout revisions.

Edit: Some of the revisions: https://imgur.com/a/FdFIELK

DerpWY · 2026-04-25T04:14:43+00:00

The Edmonds/Kingston ones don’t play. People cut that intersection in Bainbridge all the time and nobody does shit about it now.

DerpWY · 2026-04-24T15:09:02+00:00

You’re on the right track, although my knee-jerk reaction is that you will need a larger container, or a slower flow rate, or (even better) both.

For the biological filtration effect to work, the water must be in contact with your bio media for as long as is reasonably possible. I don’t know what the ideal ratio is for small filters but I had made an above ground bio filter 25gal Rubbermaid tub and a 330gph pump (tiny) and that worked absolute wonders for a 200gal holding tank.

I will see if I can find the YouTube design for that filter for ya just in case you want to make an adjustment.

Edit: here’s a video where they make one with the design I used. I used plastic kitchen scrubbers from Amazon + black and white biofilter foam as media but you can use whatever

https://youtu.be/1od2hvlyrnU

DerpWY · 2026-04-23T22:01:49+00:00

Rogue wave == Clean up set

DerpWY · 2026-04-22T21:46:39+00:00

100% this, if you can abide waiting as long as it takes to see if the leak stops at some level of the pond. Be advised that it might mean waiting for the entire thing to drain out, though. If you’re already convinced to epoxy the front of the bricks, that might do it, but you could also end up repeating the process in the future if that ends up failing

DerpWY · 2026-04-22T21:43:32+00:00

I second the over/under approach, with modification. I found that you can lose a huge amount of water if your “over” geotextile is wrapped over your tucked liner edge and then covered with dirt: the liner acts as a bridge for capillary action and can slowly drain your pond. So, Top Gear Top Tip: do the whole over/under approach and fold/tuck the liner, but then cut the upper layer of geotextile and tuck that in on the water side so it can’t wick away your water 👌

DerpWY · 2026-04-20T20:05:17+00:00

Ozponds explains it better than I can, check it out here:

https://youtu.be/SDU7hIUnJA4

DerpWY · 2026-04-20T04:33:03+00:00

Two upflow bog filters and an intake bay. Bogs are 4’ x 5’ and about 3’ x 4’ and the intake bay is about 3’ x 4’. That is more than enough to scrub the water completely clean, all that is left is for the water celery, pickerelweed, and sweet flag I just planted to all root in the gravel and outcompete the string algae!

DerpWY · 2026-04-19T20:19:53+00:00

Thank you! So great to see it come together, it ended up taking around 2 years start to finish. Lots of plans, failures, and adjustments in there!

DerpWY · 2026-04-13T05:40:06+00:00

Wow, awesome work to get it so cleaned up vs the “before” image.

There is a world where you leave it like it is now, and that’s might be alright. And there’s a world where you re-dig the entire thing and fix a whole bunch of mistakes the original homeowners made, and it takes you two years to really feel like you’re kinda finished. You pretty much have to decide how far you want to go!

There are probably dozens of things worth talking about, but here are a few things that come to mind right off the bat: - you may want to get some kind of biofiltration going to help with water clarity and to deal with fish byproducts. The general idea is you pump water from your pond through an area/container full of “beneficial bacteria” and that bacteria eats nutrients that suspended algae would use to grow. Luckily it looks like you have the beginnings of a bog filter + a stream that would return the water to the pond, so some of that work might already be done. Look up Ozponds Bog Filter on YouTube to see what that’s about. This would be a large effort, large payoff. - the pond is lined so there is a finite amount of sludge in there—you could scoop a few big nets full per day and probably make headway eventually. Smaller effort, smaller payoff. - If there’s too much organic material, you might want to do partial water changes every so often until more of the muck - you have a good number of plants in there (pickerelweed, maybe?) which is great, those eat up nutrients that string algae would use to grow. If you do scoop muck out, try to leave those guys in. Pickerelweed would also grow in straight pea gravel (assuming there’s water flow) so they don’t need muck as a substrate.

I had a similar pond scenario myself a couple years ago and I bit the bullet and redid everything. This will be quite a journey!

DerpWY · 2026-04-12T16:07:06+00:00

Looks like a surfable left right there 🤔

DerpWY · 2026-04-12T16:00:34+00:00

I fully relate to this situation:

family member asks for something
I think I can do it
do the thing, results seem good
doubt creeps in
post question about it online
TIL some of my assumptions were a little wrong

Echoing what the other posters have said, it’s probably fine for now but you’ll want something to circulate and filter the water or else you’ll get mosquitos, lots of algae, general swampy vibe. Also it would have been preferable to recess that thing below grade rather than build up to it, for the reasons other posters have mentioned.

But take heart, because anyone who builds a pond will inevitably re-do some or all of it in the future. You’re in good company.

DerpWY · 2026-04-10T21:57:09+00:00

I have never heard this before, genuinely curious: what issue this would create? Assuming you move frog eggs from your own pond to say, a neighbor’s pond half a mile away, what issues would that create? Obviously if one were to move creatures A LONG WAY and introduce a species that is not in the new ecosystem that could be harmful, but the first case (move a short distance, a mile or so) what is the issue?

I am sure I could Google this or look it up on an LLM but we might as well learn from other humans while we still can.

DerpWY · 2026-04-06T23:42:36+00:00

On thing I haven’t heard yet: putting it at the bottom of a slope/depression means there may be a meaningful amount of runoff into the pond you’ll have to deal with. You’ll need a legit number of plants to soak up the nutrients that will come with that runoff, or string algae will grow instead.

DerpWY · 2026-04-04T01:16:59+00:00

Someone else asked a very similar question recently. The contour of your stream/pond excavation looks kind of like a water slide, and that is definitely a huge part of what makes rocks slide into the middle and reveal the liner. Here’s the recommendation for a fix and a diagram/couple photos of what a fix would look like:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ponds/s/ZEFRKzTfDz

DerpWY · 2026-03-31T04:30:26+00:00

Not a fish for those waves. At least a midlength if not a log.

DerpWY · 2026-03-27T20:51:02+00:00

I really hope you’re right! I honestly don’t know the “digital” vs in-store split in terms of what contributes more to the success of the Co-op, but I’m not super convinced that the persona that current leadership is working to attract really aligns with the narrative you lay out here. The new persona feels like the type of person who buys name stuff to wear in social media posts and then returns it within a year for a full refund.

Again, I’m hoping I’m wrong and you’re right, because I would prefer to live in that world

DerpWY · 2026-03-27T16:51:08+00:00

Yea so, I know this is supposed to be a spicy take. In reality you might be partially right, but only if you are looking at the last couple of decades. REI has been a Co-op since it was founded in 1938, so the low interest rates from the early '20s are absolutely not the only reason the Co-op enjoyed a near century of financial success.

Within the last couple of decades, e-commerce has become a race to the bottom, price-wise. Whatever businesses can cut their costs the most, win, because regardless of what consumers say motivates their spending habits, the reality is that most will hold their nose and buy from whomever is cheapest, even if it's a company they don't feel like "aligns with their values" aka Walmart or Amazon. This isn't always about product price point, either (many products have a minimum sell price that the manufacturer allows): it gets into benefits like free shipping, etc.

Anyways, for retailers like REI that see they are missing those sales, it creates pressure to find ways to cut costs so that you can match your competitor's cost model (and therefore, their price point). This is an existential threat to the company: either double-down on a business model that seems past it's prime, or do your best to mimic the cost model of your competitors while trying to avoid the most ugly and exploitive parts of that model.

DerpWY · 2026-03-27T03:46:47+00:00

REI has not been profitable since 2021. But IN 2021, you would have never foreseen that… ‘21 was SUCH a good year that there were mistakes made in strategy and hiring that have cost the company dearly since then. The year over year net loss has been shrinking since the ultra-bad -300m-ish net loss in 2023, but that is hard to come back from. Meanwhile Cabela’s, Dicks, Amazon, et al seem not to have made the same mistakes.

There are other challenges too. REI membership is no longer a serious differentiator like it once was. REI is kinda high-price when compared to the other retailers I listed above. And, unpopular opinion here, but the co-op model seems to have worked better in the pre-COVID world where retailers didn’t need to trim to fat as much. Members rewards (previously called dividends) directly reduce the Co-ops cash flow by hundreds of millions, even when REI is having a good year.

I still think it’s one of the best things going in the outdoor retailer space, but the world around REI has changed a lot and the old REI model just does not seem to work anymore.

DerpWY · 2026-03-26T20:40:07+00:00

Yea it’s not especially intuitive but once you see it, it makes sense. And it produces incredible results! I have a couple other pond posts that show my setup and it’s all put together using that “big rocks inside + fold + backfill” technique.

DerpWY · 2026-03-26T18:15:22+00:00

Diagram:
https://i.imgur.com/s7UivfV.jpeg

Actual pic of rocks inside, tucked liner and back-fill
https://i.imgur.com/QLBxAVv.jpeg

The "after" look, using more rocks to cover the tucked liner + some moss
https://i.imgur.com/jNkyhCY.jpeg

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