Leaking pond,air under liner??

17 years ago

We have an 8,000 gallon man-made backyard pond, with a seamless heavy- duty flexible liner.We had VERY heavy rains last week- pond was overfull, when it stopped raining, the pond started to lose water- at the same time, there seem to be big pockets of air under the liner. When we press on the air pocket, it just shifts, no air bubbles appear anywhere.It is losing about an inch every 8-9 hours. Hoping someone has a simple solution- other than draining whole pond and looking for the ahle...it's a BIG poind, lots of fish,frogs,etc.Any ideas!!?HELP!!

Featured Answer

bugsb

17 years ago

I would bet because of the shift pushing the pond up, the pond is leaking over the sides somewhere. It only takes a small amount of constant leak to lose that much water. I have had leaks from my stream that can be difficult to find until you remove whatever is covering your liner edge. Have you let your water level go down until it stops lowering? This will tell you at what level the leak is. In other words just let the pond go and unless it completely drains you will find the level at which the leak is occurring. As far as the bubble underneath that is probably water that has gotten between the liner and the earth below it.

Here is a link that might be useful: My pond the way it was before the freeze.

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Comments (10)

rcavanagh
Original Author
17 years ago
The water level is well below all edges of the pond now, still going down.I keep hoping it will stop before we have to remove the fish...
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bugsb
17 years ago
You might want to think now of a container (chlorine free) to put the fish in just in case the worst were to happen and the leak is at the bottom. You don't have a stream or anything do you? It would be helpful if you could post a photo also.
Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: My pond the way it was before the freeze.
rcavanagh
Original Author
17 years ago
We have a retaining pool and a waterfall- but the pool is full, and we haven't yet turned on the pump for the waterfall(we had ice not long ago, here in MA!)I have a kiddie pool(big one), I'll use for fish, if necessary- all my little green frogs are poking their heads up- and this week is the usual week for the great TOAD orgy...
I'll take a picture tomorrow....
mike_il
17 years ago
Rcavanagh, The pond is not leaking. What happened is very simple. With the heavy rains the ground water got higher than the water in the pond and lifted the liner up. When it lifted the liner the water in the pond got pushed out. Now the water in the ground is going down and not pushing the liner up as high. As it goes down the water level in the pond keeps going down as the water under the liner goes down. I would fill the pond up as full as you can get it and that should push all the water out from under the liner. You may have to fill it again in 24 hours but after that it should hold water just fine.
Mike
rcavanagh
Original Author
17 years ago
Mike! I hope and pray you are right- it makes sense!!!Thank you, I'll let you know how it works!!!!
tillertilter
17 years ago
Mike is right!

-TT
waterworksoh
17 years ago
We had the same problem with our 4000 gallon pond. The ground water table is low and it pushed the liner up. To solve the problem, we added rocks to the bottom and a ground water drain. Has been working fine for the past 4 years.
rcavanagh
Original Author
17 years ago
Yes- thank you Mike, it seems to be filling up just fine. We've had the pond for 7-8 years , this is the first time it happened, we had an extraordinary amount of rain this month. What a relief! Thank you, everyone for your time and concern!
heatherbree
17 years ago
Thank you for posting this question because we are dealing with the same thing. I was in a panic because our pond is over 10,000 gallons. The answer makes total sense now because we have the pond near a stream that will overflow and the ground surrounding the pond is quite wet still. we are in CT and we had the same rainfest LOL