If you are doing the labor yourself, I don't see why you are getting her to price the parts. Just order them yourself! Check azponds.com. They have good prices, although their customer service is not so great. Be sure to do include a bottom drain in the pond.

Depending on the depth (at about 3'), you will have about 2,500-3,000 gal.:
Pump $500.
Filter $750.
UV light $300.
Bottom drain $100.
Liner $700
Pipe and valves $300
Landscaping and rocks $500 - $1500

Naturally these are ballpark figures, but this would build a very nice pond. Especially if you are doing the pond yourself, which can be a great experience (depending on your abilities).

How much depend on the type and quality. $500 is not unheard of for a 3000 GPH pump, but that is a high quality external one. Filtration alone can cost $1000 or even $5000 depending on what you want. You can also do the whole filtration system for $200 DIY.

So its really hard to tell you if $4000 is a fair price without knowing which items you are getting.

The pond I constructed several years ago cost between $1000-1200 without a bottom drain. It is 10 x 15 x 3 with a 100 gallon Skippy filter, a waterfall, no skimmer[ made one but it didn't work well] and a UV sterilizer-clarifier. A few years ago I bought a 16 0r 20 gallon Shop Vac which does a good cleanup. The stone around the pond and the waterfall is
from the yard and fields. It depends on how handy you are and how much time you have. Good luck.

Our first pond was 11 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 2'it cost just over $1700 and that was shoping for the best deals on what we bought. It was the plants that were the killer :)
All the rock was free.
So its all relative.

check out Graystone Creations for pond kits. Thats where I got mine. I thought they where reasonable after looking around.

Some of the prices you quoted sound high the small skimmer and small biofalls--both of these need to be sized for the pond volume especially the biofalls. Actually everything needs to be sized for the pond so research carefully! I had a small biofalls on my first pond before reno on it only held 30 gals of water and a bag of lava rock totally useless for 1000 gal pond. Although the pond lady will do the work for her the equipment will be higher than what you'd pay from a pond company and do it yourself. Curb's prices are more like it--I think he uses a bead filter of some type but you can like others suggested build your own skippy filter. Building it yourself is labor intensive but very rewarding when it's finally done--just make sure you know what you want before you start building and hiring an excavator for the digging would be so much easier than by hand. I dug my 2500 gal pond by hand with many 5 gal buckets of dirt put in the wheelbarrow and loaded on the truck--took out a ton of dirt by hand. Good luck with your project!

I'm building a 8x5x4 waterfall pond. I bought a kit for $400. It has the 45 epdm liner with 25 year warranty, the skimmer, a 2500 gph waterfall pump and the pump and skimmer both have a 15 year warranty. I need to buy the bottom drain & bio filter yet.

It's going to be an adventure, for me anyways! Good luck to you.

Last year I put in two ponds.One 9x6 with a waterfall and the second 17x9 (depth of both is 28 inches), and connected them with a 12 foot stream. I believe the costs were near $1200 for the liners,pump,skimmer pvc piping and connectors and valves,filter media,electrical supplies and a pallet of rock. I had an extra 100 gallon stock tank that i made into a skippy filter, so saved that expense as well as additonal rock expense by collecting them from my fie1ds. All the work of digging and installation i did myself.It was a lot of work, but worth the effort.

My 17' by 12' was around 2000 dollars. It has a 3500 gal pump with a skimmer and bio waterfall filter. Did all the digging myself and all the rocks were collected along county roads and small creeks. Hauled them all in the trunk of my car. It took quite a few trips but it was a long winter and I had plenty of time.

There is a lot more to the cost of building a pond. Do you want fish? Do you want to break your back to maintain the pond / filter ? Do you want it to be gorgeous or look home made? Depending on the answers, the pond could cost a lot more or less than the quotes above. Spend some time thinking about what you really desire.

Very few people over spend on a filter..quality costs. Also- stick with the larger pond. In my life I've found few people regret owning large ponds or Greenhouses and most later wish they had bigger of both!

Right Stan & SCAC: and this thread was from 11 years ago.

oops. They are now pushing up posies by now..lol..

I am in the process of doing mine for 200$. 25$ for the pond liner on ebay 14x16 so it will be a more of an 8 by 12 and will use every inch of liner, old carpet, plastic, and tarp "free" for underlayjment, quiet one 1200 35$ for singular trickle water effect, hydor korlia nano 450 GPH powerhead, 10$ heater for DIY wrap on 35$ tropical water lilly, ordered some water chestnuts, will pick up some water celery as we can't grow celery here, just picked up 5 pots of black gamecock iris for 3$ a pot on sale, already have a couple of Iris and black elephant ear, will make a DIY control box, might pick up a 10$ submersible light off ebay and put it on a 10$ timer. Planning on using guppies, mollies, and moquito fish. I mean you can spend mad $, or use natural rocks, wood stups "I am going to use driftwood", local plants, etc.

Use the power head aimed at the surface of the water to move the water, its amazing how much water agitation can be created with a 400 GPH powerhead. This will work well with small fish, but again I wouldn't do this on a high end koi pond. It all depends on what you want to do, my pond will look better than most of the koi ponds by the time I am done at 1 / 20th the cost. That said, I also have plans on doing a 40x12 Japanese meditation zero edge pond/pool with a small swimming area, level stepping balance stones, and black sea rock pebbles with white sand that will probably cost me around 10K.... but I plan on stocking that with ironically crawfish and making tubes under the DIY concrete stepping stones for them to live on so I can eat my crawfish when I want "that and the 3-5 foot depth can keep predators out". We have too much natural predation here for koi or larger fish.

Heck yall spending 2k can get a saltwater reef aquarium for the same price. The skimmers really aren't protein skimmers, just a box water flows into with filter floss and maybe bio balls "not much different than beneficial plants that filter your water. Heck you can diy a small pump50-75$, pvc pipe, run activated carbon, and then do a biological trough for near nothing for a large pond.

You also don't need a 500$ pump unless you want a massive waterfall. https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/quiet-one-pro-6000-1876-gph-lifegard.html A quiet one 600 GPH pump and two power heads will move just as much if not more H20.