If you look carefully, you will see the entire porch full of boxes - boxes and boxes of plumbing parts! This is a 100 ft. roll of 4" PVC Flex pipe - which we nicknamed 'Anaconda' pipe.  When we tried to unroll it, it wrestled 2 big guys to the ground!  Too large to ship UPS, Jason drove it up from Koi by Keirin in PA. Mike starts the job of threading 2" PVC Flex behind the rebar 'Cage'.  The pipe is held to the 'Cage' with thick cable ties.  It usually took 3 of us to thread the pipe behind the rebar - working it bar by bar, and everyone climbed on the cage to tie the pipe on. 'Over 1/2 mile of flex pipe was installed behind the rebar!  Most was 2", but there was a lot of     1 1/2", some 3" and 100 feet of 4"!  That's a mountain of pipe!' 'The most critical runs were done first.  Everything that was likely to run during the winter was installed more than 4 feet down, so it would be below the frost line.' Here's a close-up of a bottom drain.  The extra pipe coming into the back holds the air line.  The lids to these drains have large air domes attached directly to the lids, to provide oxygen from 12 feet' down! Carl Forss from Koi by Keirin.  Carl was the consultant and primary designer of the pond systems.  He came up to CT to help with the last day of plumbing, he oversaw the ShotCrete 'blow', and designed the rock work. We are working on the back wall of the pond.  To the left is the waterfall.  You can see the terminus of several large pipes, and some 6" by-pass pipes.  In the middle is the large bog.  You can just see a single line along the bottom which runs a series of jets in the back. We got a little crazy installing cable ties.  If it was stationary - we tied it to the rebar!  Note Mike's right leg that has been cable-tied to the 'Cage'. Right behind the ladder is the 'Trench' where the pipes run from the wall of the pond to the basement.  All the pipes went in and out of the basement.  'Over 1000 special 'wide' cable ties were used to attach the pipe to the re-bar.  These made sure that the ties did not cut into the pipes when the weight of the water was added.' Detail of the large bog.  You can see the 4 jets sticking out of the back wall.  These are aimed at the bottom, and continuously wash the bottom debris into the pond where it is washed to the bottom drains. At first, the lines were just installed behind the rebar.  Then, they were adjusted so that there was at least 4" between pipes, and the pipes were tight to the rebar. 'Installing the pipes tight to the rebar made sure that they were completely encased in concrete.  Each pipe has it's own concrete casing, and the strength of the wall wall was maintained without weak spots!' These are just some of the pipes in the trench.  We just stuffed them in, and worried about connecting them to the basement after the 'blow'.  More than 40 pipes went through the basement wall! Here we work on one of the skimmers.  The skimmers are commercial style, and have an automatic by-pass so that they cannot clog and destroy the pumps.  Note the board on the rebar - it's HARD to walk on rebar all day, so if we were working in one spot, we put a board there! This shot shows the large bog on the left, and the 'Trench' on the right.  This is the 'shallow' end - you are looking at a 2 story ladder... Here we do a few final tweaks before the big 'blow'!  Note the blue tarp put up behind the wall - tarps completely surrounded the hole to avoid over-blow.  Todd is up on top adjusting the final wall height, while Carl finishes testing a skimmer. My favorite picture!  Looks like a printed circuit board! The bottom piping finished!  The Yin/Yang loop towards the bottom of the picture holds 10 wash-down jets that will automatically push debris towards the bottom drains.  The lowest ring on the wall holds another 20 bottom jets.  This system is automatically controlled via timers. A final detail of the left wall.  Here you can clearly see the separation between the pipes.  We tried not to cross pipes - but with this many - it was bound to happen!  In these areas, the clay behind the pipes was chipped away to make sure both layers of pipes were individually encased and the strength of the wall was not compromised