Need more information. What is your budget? How much pond maintenance do you want? What will be the size of the pond? Sun or shade? Plumbing the bottom drain is a simple part of this.

What size pond, What kind of fish if you want fish, waterfall, tprs, in sun or shade , do you want plants in pond or just fish? Pumps-submersible or external, filtration, vortex filters, DIY filtration or purchased.
What kind of media are you going to use, how deep do you want it--- depends on what your temps are in the winter or how hot is it in the summer. Up north, 5 ft deep for koi ponds is a start. In the south, a min of 3 ft but 4 is better. A DIY koi pond runs about $10,000 done right starting out and that doesnt include the fish.
Depends on what you want and how much you can spend. If you cant do a koi pond right, do a watergarden and you can come out cheaper and very pretty as well but don't mince a koi pond with a water garden. It doesnt work.
Give us more info on what you are looking to get.

s {{gwi:184480}}
Here's a shot of my bottom drain install today{{gwi:184483}}

Here is how we did ours...It's 2300 gallons and has a lot of swimming room for the koi...It is completely a DIY job and
ran us no where 10K...including a 200 gallon biological pond,
dock, liner bottom drain, skimmer etc...

Here's what we did the first year

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this is the second year

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the pond footprint...

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I provided my website -- you can view Pond plans and diagrams -- as well as our links, on our link page is "Chuck Rushes site, check it out.
Good luck, your adventures are about to begin.

Joann

Here is a link that might be useful: CJ's Pond

Here is the drawing I did of my pond before constructing.....if it were a rectangle, it would be 12'x8'. It is 5' deep. Approx. 3000 gallons. 1 1/2 ft in ground, rest is above ground. I have the pump pulling from 2 bottom drains and 1 surface skimmer. I "T" off the water before it does to the filter, so I do not over work the filter. 1/2 of the water goes to the uv/filter combo, the other 1/2 goes to a plant ledge and run through the roots for a "natural" filter, and it creates a nice waterfall. The water from the filter, goes back through two end waterfalls. The plumbing was very easy....the green and red lines are my buried plumbing lines.

-Amanda-
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Thank You to all responses.

asunl - that is a very nice drawing and lay out. Do you have a picture of your pond that I could see?

cliff and joann - that is exactly what I needed thank you. I love your site. I now have it in my favorites. I am a little confused about the waste basket vortex in the first tub, could you explain how you put that together and how does it work? And lets see if I got this right, after the fourth tub half the water goes to the waterfall and half goes to the bio-pond?

Cliff scraped the vortex thing and just uses the entire first tub as a settling chamber...(most of all the waste settles in the first tub)he empties that first tub on his weekly maintenance and uses a coffee can to scoop out the stuff still remaining on the very bottom of the first tub..we don't have a drain valve in the first tub, but recommend putting in one.
There is only three tubs,... yes, one line travels through
the bio pond, it travels through by gravity ... the water exits the pond through the bottom drain, goes through the three tubs and then travels underground to the bio pond...when it leaves the bio pond it travels back to the main pond and re-enters the pond from under the wood dock in the back of the pond...

the waterfalls (we have 5 waterfalls -- 4 small falls and one big fall ) -- comes over the falls after passing through the last tub. You are right, this does not pass through the bio pond, just through the three tubs. Just one gravity fed
line runs from the last tub to the bio pond and back 24/7.
Also, we don't often run all the waterfalls at the same time.
I hope this is clear....

Joann

Rosegarden
Here is an updated written version of our system, it is not on my website cause I had trouble cut and pasting it into the website program.

Did you tell us how big of a pond you're making?

Our Pond System...
Our system is a gravity fed system which means:
The filter tubs are buried in the ground.

The water in the tubs is at the same level as the pond water.

The entire pond bottom is slightly tilted toward the bottom
drain so that any accumulation of fish waste that settles
on the bottom naturally gravitates toward and through the drain. We do daily
water changes by adding 10 to 15 minutes of fresh water every day and letting it run
over the pond sides. Fortunately for us we dont have to use de-clor. We estimate that these water
changes amount to about 30-35% water changes in a week.
We also once or twice a week lay the hose on the pond bottom to help sweep any accumulated
yuck toward and to the bottom drain ( this way mulm doesnt have a chance to accumulate if you keep this up on a regular basis). If you do this you have to make sure you have an anti-siphon valve, to prevent the pond water from going back into the drinking water..

The dirty pond water is continually exiting the pond and going through filter tubs, the first tub has three compartments, each compartment has various filter material, to filter the water and trap fish waste etc.

After the water goes through the three tubs it travels (gravity fed) underground to a separate biological pond that is filled with vegetation.

The water enters this biological pond from tubing that is on top of a waterfall, the water spills down the waterfall and
travels through the biological pond getting scrubbed by all the vegetation in it's path.

The water then exits the biological pond, travels underground again (18 feet) and re-enters the pond from
under the small wood dock in back of the pond.

This process is continually in force 24/7.

There is three filter tubs daisy chained together. The first compartment in the first tub gets cleaned every 5 to 14 days (the clarity of the pond water governs this task if the water loses its crispness we will clean it more often. In spring every few days may be necessary cause we are surrounded by oaks and all the pollen that falls into the pond and sinks turns the water a tea color if we don't keep on top of it. Once the fist spring pollen droppings are over every five to 14 days is sufficient.

We use various filter material, quilt batting is one of them. As I said previously, the first tub is divided into three compartments, each compartment has filter material wrapped around a divider. The filter material in the first compartment is what gets cleaned every fifth day. My head groundskeeper fills 5 gallon tubs with pond water and rinses
the filter material up and down, then waters all the plants with this water, he re-fills the 5 gallon tubs and keeps rinsing the material until it is clean. This takes 45 minutes.
Now he could just rinse the filter material by hosing it off this would take only five minutes, but it is all how you look at things....to him it is therapeutic and he enjoys doing so. And since he is an avid gardener he enjoys walking around watering all the plants with this water in the tubs.

We also have underground sprinklers so watering the plants by hand with this pond water is not necessary but to him it's enjoyable. My point being that with a bottom drain you could clean out the filter material every fifth day with a hose and have it done in ten minutes.

The advantage to the bottom drain, is the pond never needs vacuuming, never needs to be emptied in early spring for cleaning.

We also have a skimmer that is under the little dock in the back, this only traps the stuff that floats on the surface, in early spring when the trees are dropping their pollen the basket needs to be emptied 2 to 3 times a day. In summer we don't even have it hooked up because we use the pump that operates the skimmer for additional waterfalls. The skimmer is only used spring and fall.

I hope I covered everything. The bottom drain is very effective in a large pond. In my opinion, it is the single most important thing you can do for your pond, everything else you can improve upon later. We added the skimmer and biological pond the second year.

It is a system that has served us well for 11 years. Our pond is always clean and has crisp water to view the fish, which are the main attraction. We do not use a UV light because
this filter system works so well, we dont have the need for UV light.

I, as well as many others always tout the merits of the Bottom Drain, and a rock less pond floor so that the waste doesn't get trapped in between the rocks. The only part of our pond that has rocks is the 4 x5 section in front of the lower pond deck. These rocks are hosed off and turned to expose a clean side usually every two weeks, usually a large amount of crud is released from these rocks when the beach is cleaned every two weeks...when we hose the beach, the crud is released into the pond and flows toward the bottom drain.

Thank You very much! I understand it all now. I have not decided how big of a pond I will have yet. We have about 2 feet of snow on the ground right now so it is hard to make complete plans right now. but I will update in spring when the snow is gone.

Rose

Good Luck.