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| PAGE 1 of 7 One of the most frequent and rewarding jobs we are called on to do, is to help out with the overall design of both the pond and the actual filtration system .. and we are always pleased to be able to do so... One of the latest pond construction designs in
our portfolio has been a pond we were pleased to be commissioned
to work on for a customer in the Cayman Islands and we would
like to share just a few of the pleasures and hard work that can
go into building a true 'State of the Art' Koi pond ...
naturally our customer has agreed to our doing this and showing
you his beautiful pond... |
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The pond in question took almost 10 months to come from an idea in the head of our customer to being a fact of life .. and it was whilst I was overseas in Japan last October that the customer first made contact with me having been recommended to us by another customer, who have also become nice friends, who live in Dallas Texas.... For the first few months we spent many hours throwing a few designs around before we were able to come up with something that the customer was happy with .. emails were a regular occurrence with up to as many as 6 emails going back and forth to the Cayman Islands each day .... It is always a very hard thing to try to
explain to the customers, who have never had a pond, not even a
gold fish pond previously, the importance of being able to
provide the space required for the most important part of any
pond - the filtration system and other essential equipment ...
and this was no exception to that rule .. and it was many weeks
before our customer could appreciate what we were advising him
and saying to him ... and of course obstacles were in the way
both mentally and physically ... we had to take drastic steps,
and the nerve, to point out to the customer the fact that some
of those beautiful Palm Tree's which I personally love so much,
had to go as they were in the way and right in the area where we
were suggesting that the filtration system had to go if the
system was to work as a true Koi pond with the minimum amount of
labour required as far as the maintenance was concerned .. and
if you take a look at this first photograph of the customers
garden, then you will begin to understand what a difficult task
we had in making these suggestions...
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Following many drawings we prepared and submitted
to our customer we eventually had a mutually acceptable scheme and
work in earnest began on that particular design .. and the
pond was not to be quite as large as we had originally thought or
been working on for many weeks - but our customer was happy that
was the design he and his partner wished to have ... and the
preparation and the hard task of the clearing of the land began.
Again not really known to us whilst we were sitting in our office
in Flamborough was the fact that the land on the Cayman Islands is
mainly Coral Rock .. solid ground with very little soil covering
.. and I began to get grumbles from the customer just how hard the
work was .. and still I continued to say .. deeper - deeper - it
has to be deeper .. and the grumbles still continued .. but at the
end of the day a good depth was achieved .... and in the photo's
below you can see the first excavations - although the shape of
the pond on these photo's were to change dramatically over the
next few months..... |
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As you can see from those photographs .. the pond excavations are quite shallow .. and it was at this point that I had to keep going back to him saying 'it has to be deeper' .... also you will notice that the shape of the pond also changed - and planting shelves etc were completely eliminated as the excavations progressed... In the next set of photo's on the next page you will see how the pond suddenly began to take some form and it began to look more like a Koi Pond and of course what we had designed for this customer initially ... but I could also appreciate that it must have been a very difficult job cutting through the coral rock, especially in temperatures of over 35 degrees.... |
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