I swung by the land on Wednesday after heavy rainfall for two days to see the pond “full” for the first time. I define a full pond by the water level reaching the overflow pipe. I had the overflow valve closed during the rains, so the water level is now up near the top of the…
Pond water level nearly full
I check the pond level every once in a while, and it looks like we are within about 7cm of the overflow pipe now: There are still another month or two of heavy rains, so the pond is very likely to fill up this year. The next question is how far it will drop during…
Sand in pond biofiltration zone nearly covered
I’ve been waiting for the rains to fill up the pond. It still has about 20cm left to go, but it has rained pretty hard about once a week or once every two weeks recently. The next milestone is for the water to cover all of the sand. It is now within a few centimeters…
Building the walkway on the other side of the pond
We finished the east half of the walkway back June, and focused on other priorities since then. So we finally got around to building out the west half now. And with our large push cart built, the workers have a much easier time of moving the stones and sand around. The west side of the…
They threw some water plants in with the trees
The guy we bought trees from was pretty excited by our organically filtered pond and mentioned he had a whole bunch of water plants that we could grow in the filter zone that he would throw in for free. The plants were thalia geniculata plants. First we had to clear all of the invasive Thai morning…
Yesterday on land, today in the water: the pontoons float!
I’ve been writing a lot about the experimental pontoons we’ve been building recently. Well, yesterday we got a chance to assemble them into a kind of rough boat (raft?) and take it out onto the pond. First the welding team along with the help of some of the construction workers carried both of the pontoons…
Adding water plants into the pond regeneration zone
So the recent rains have helped fill in the pond, and it is finally getting to a height that would allow us to continue planting in the regeneration zone. To review, the principle behind the sand regeneration zone is that water is pumped from pipes under the sand that have small holes in them back…
Pond water level reaches top of the wall for the first time
I noticed that the water level in the pond reached the top of the sand filter retaining wall (just barely) for the first time last weekend. Here are a few photos:
A rat chewed through my 3D printed overflow pipe mesh
If you recall back in March, I finished the overflow pipe and even 3D printed a plastic cover to keep the mosquitoes and snakes and other critters out. Well, that didn’t work so well. Sometime in the past week or two, a rat chewed through my beautiful cover. You can tell it was a rat…
Rains of biblical proportions
After a record drought, we seem to have moved on to record rainfall this week. Just a week ago, Praew and I were walking around the pond and wondering why, despite occasional rains, the water level seemed to be stuck at a point that put the whole “floating house” idea in doubt if that was…
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