Wall Construction

[Telthepondman]

Justin i'm not about today much,going down to pick up a couple of fish from Worthing aquatics. Iwill reply to your post later. Bear with me. Tel

[Thorny]

Cheers Tel

[Telthepondman]

Dear Justin, back home now, got my new fish back safely. Just to clear up a few points and to answer your questions.Many years ago it was farely common standard practice in the swimming pool industry to use horizontal and vertical re- bar in odd shaped pools, kidney shaped for instance. Of course with the advent of Gunnite this become less used but is still widely used on the continent, Spain for instance. When i first started my pond building company we took it upon ourselves to develop a standard set of construction details and worked very closely with a structural engineer to come up with details that would work in nearly all ground conditions. One thing he came up with, for instance was double mesh in the base for certain sizes of pond. I wrote about this many times in the past in various mags but did not want to tell my competitors to much as there were'nt to many of us about at that time. It does not matter now as i have retired from building ponds and prefer to play with wood instead, my second love after my wife and kids of course.One thing i do know and stick by, £200 or so spent with a structural engineer for peace of mind is money well spent and a lot of pond builders out there should bear this in mind. Anyway i diversify, horizontal bars up to about 12 mm can be bent over your knee quite easily. We used 8mm which would bend to most curves, and weave quite easily through the vertical bars round most bends. I take your point about the size of morter joint at about 10-12 mm but in reality laying hollows in a pond is not an exact science and joints up to 20mm is not unusual. I allso take your point about joining vertical re-bar and i should have stressed that you should have a minimum lap of about 9 inches or so. Anyway i think i have said enough on this subject now, other Questers will be getting bored by now, and as i said in the beginning this is only my humble opinion for what it is worth, but this construction method never let me down. Best Regards Tel.