We have started to collect the wood needed to make scaffolding for the rebar installation.  You can see the 'Trench' from the pond to the house in the upper middle of the picture. Rebar delivery truck.  Thank goodness they delivered - 20 foot lengths of 1/2" steel isn't light!  400 bars were used! The scaffolding being set.  This shot is taken in May from the bed surrounding the goldfish pond, with the purple Alliums blooming in the foreground. Our rebar expert was Dave Fletcher.  He started building the 'cage' from the trench area working clockwise.  He did the top areas first, working his way around the hole, then did the bottom of the walls, with the floor last. 'We goldfish got used to all the commotion - learning to ignore anything that wasn't dropped into the pond!' Here you can see the thickness of the top wall of the blow being set by the curved rebar.  The ShotCrete walls ended up about 12" thick.  Looking down from the top of the goldfish pond bed, Dave used 1-3 assistants to bend the rebar and keep him in constant supply. You can see that this corner of the pond is only 6' from the house!  Dave has worked on all sorts of commercial structures, but he thought this one was was particularly interesting!  We just got the delivery of stone for the bottom - you can see about 1/2 of it in the hole.  That's about 20 TONS of stone! The shape was continuously curving, and we wanted everything smooth and flowing.  Imagine bending steel into these intricate shapes - to get an appreciation of how skilled Dave was!  The backhoe was gone, so we had to move this stone by shovels!  No need to have a health club membership! Dave is roughing out the placement for the first skimmer.  There are a total of 5 in this design, to help with the huge amount of leaves under the trees, and to work in swirling wind conditions which are common in this area. The crew used simple devices to bend the bars to Dave's exacting standards, as he wired each intersection together.  The bar was placed in 12" squares towards the top, but 6" squares on the bottom 1/2 and the floor! The walls of the pond are primarily rock and clay, which were amazingly resistant to erosion by rain.  Any erosion once the rebar was in place would be a disaster - as there would be no way to get behind the rebar to remove it, and the  walls would be too thick. 'Dave was amazingly quick, but the rebar still took about 2 weeks to finish!' Here we have spread the rock into an even 6" layer on the bottom.  This will insure excellent drainage of water under the pond shell.  We had a bit of rain during the rebar installation to test that! 'The pond bottom slopes from the 'deep' end near the 'Pit' to the 'shallow' end near the house.' Dave has worked around to the 'Pit' area, where he has to construct a back wall to hold the concrete.  He would then rebar in front of this wall just like all the other pond walls. The 'Pit' was constructed concurrently with the rebar.  You get a good feeling as to the careful timing needed so that the 'Pit' area was ready for Dave as he worked his way around. It was always amazing to stand at the bottom of the hole and look upwards!  The rebar is actually drilled into the surrounding walls several feet to support the 'cage'. Here, Dave is looking at the levels necessary to set the bottom drains correctly.  He instructed us to build boxes and runways using wood strips in the loose stone bottom to make sure the ShotCrete completely encased the drains and all the piping.  This is one box that supported a bottom drain. 'The details of each step of the pond building process were carefully planned, and the timeline set - although not always met!' Only a day away from Dave building the back wall, we connect the 'Anaconda' pipe to the bottom drains, and run it into the 'Pit'.  Everything was going extremely well! 'Setting the bottom drains was one of the most exacting projects!' Here, you can see the shape of the large bog, which is set into the side of the pond.  This space will be fenced off from the Koi, and used to grow copious amounts of Water Hyacinths for filtration. It is about 16 feet around the back wall, and 2 1/2 feet' deep. Right before the end of the rebar phase - we hit the monsoon season!  It rained and rained!  Dave strung up some tarps and just kept working, and the walls held up remarkably well!.  You can see the 3 bottom drains and their piping to the vortex. After the bogs were done, Dave started work constructing the form of the waterfall!  There are 2 main basins, and a drop of about 2 feet from the lower basin into the pond.  The waterfall back-wall is about 10 feet high! After all the walls were complete, and the bogs and waterfall constructed, the bottom rebar was started. View across the pond to the final rebar of the waterfall!  You can see the 12" spacing of the upper 1/2 of the cage.  The blue tarp is in the big bog. The final 'Cage'!  All the little white bits on the bottom are pieces of brick that set the exact height of the cage above the stone for the rebar to be completely encased in the ShotCrete. 'Well, I guess it has the shape of a pond - but it's still a bit hard to imagine it with water!'