Factory Office Indoor Pond Build

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Luc70

Dovii
MFK Member
Jan 8, 2009
731
359
102
Bangkok, Thailand
Hello all,

Some of you might have seen my Arapaima Pond Building thread.
Along the lines somewhere, I mentioned that a customer of mine wants me to build him something in his office.
Today had a quick chat with him again on it. Turns out that he's set to have a pond like the one I built, but indoors.
That's going to happen over the next couple of months, major project and with a better budget to do it.

Going to visit the construction-site next week and make some pictures and start planning.
Already told him to keep the area of the pond free of floor/concrete. So we can dig a hole at least a meter deep with bottom drains and then poor concrete walls and bottom.

He is talking about a pond of 10 meters, (Thai language, so need to trust my colleague for translation).
So looks like quite a project.

My first thoughts are:

1. Concrete pond, 1 meter in the ground and about 70cm above the ground.
2. Concrete walls above the ground with a large viewing window in one of the walls facing the office entrance so you can see fish from above and side.
3. Use Lave Rock/Stones to build up the sides and back.
4. My customer is from Chinese descent, so for sure I'll have to count for waterfalls/movement according to Feng Shu.
5. Incorporate some planters/low light plants. Likely, planters or hooks for orchids and other plants would be a good bet. Keep non-flowering ones outside and rotate them once the get flowers.

Need to do a site-survey first of course, but I think filtration outside the building.
Bottom drains and skimmers going underground.
Settling-tank/holding tank and filter-tanks, then pump back into the building to waterfall and nozzles in the pond-wall.
Looks like it will be a linear setup of 4-5 filter-houses or if I am lucky, it might be possible to get an outdoor bog area of some kind.

Funny detail: I have no idea yet on what fish he wants to have in there. Will sort that out next week as well.

Will of course post endless streams of pictures when it all gets off the ground.
Hope, as a reward for that, to get endless streams of tips, tricks, advise and comments...lol.

Back soon,
Luc
 
Sounds like fun to me

Sent from my DROIDX using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 
Thanks Randy, Kevin, same here. Can't wait to get started. Have been reading up a bit on filters/ponds and ideas are forming even without having seen the place. Will need some talks with the owner on his ideas and taste for the pond-materials to be used.
Looking forward to get out and see the construction-site next week.
Will keep a log similar to the Arapaima Pond build.
This one will also serve as a nice practice for my future in-outdoor pond and fishroom when I finish renovating the house we bought early this year.
 
Thanks Pacu-Mom. Having lots of fun already thinking about it.
Many things I'd have done better/different with the Araipama-pond with some more resources, so this being inside an office has to become a piece of art like your Pacu-home...
 
Unfortunately, no chance of site-visit this week. Schedules with work are horrendous with year-end approaching.
Customer came over today so we did have a talk about it.
He's in love with our Arapaima and wanted the same fish.
Came to discuss the size of the pond and had him understand that he could not house it in anything smaller than the 10x5 meter footprint.
With that in mind, he said, I could put a very large pond in the warehouse, but he was not 100% sure on the office.

Told him, as a company, you want to have your office entrance to impress your customers when they walk in.
He agreed and I told him to scale down to maybe 5-7 meters by 2.5-3 meters as a more workable scale pending site-visit and drawings of his office. Showed him some pictures of RTC, Tiger Shovel Nose, Arowana, assuring him that especially the RTC will be as entertaining and sweet as our Arapaima in a more 'economical' size.

Then went on to some basic ideas for the pond, showed him various pictures on the web.
1. A natural look with rocks and everything. Expensive, difficult and a hell of a lot of work.
2. More formal structure, blending in with the granite and wall decoration used. Maybe a waterfall of sorts. 1 or 2 glass/plexi viewing windows to see the fish.

On that part, he's pretty sure on No. 2. Especially with the 2 viewing windows.
Top of the pond with have granite overhang over the water to give some shelter to fish when people look into the pond.
They are currently piling, so after that, I can draw the pond into the office-plans, then tell them to cut out the rebar of the floor and dig out that area to 1.5 meters.
Next will be to put bottom drain in, rebar for the side-walls above floor level and return lines.

For the filter, again he wants a bog, seeing mine he's set to have that as well.
So plan is to have bottom-drain go outside, into a settling-tank and then a bog area that goes back into the pond again.
Will make for some interesting plumbing, since I will likely need 2 or more pumps.
Guessing I can solve it with Overflows in Main Pond, Settling tank, bog all connected together, so that I don't have to deal with matching pumps to pump the same amount of water (which is impossible, I know that much).
But for all water-holding areas, no matter what happens, they'd all keep the appropriate level because of those connecting overflows.
Just need to get float-switches on the pump to make sure they don't run dry (which would be virtually impossible because of those 3 connecting overflows.) or empty the pond and 1 external overflow to keep the overall water-level within safe range.

All depends on how I can do the return outside from the bog. We'll see. First priority is to keep that water healthy and crystal clear.

My plan is to go concrete with a waterproofing paint/layer.
Every bit of advise is very welcome. First time I'm getting into a big project for concrete water-proofing.

Cheers,
Luc
 
Checked with an old supplier of mine who does fiberglass applications.
A 3 layer 3mm thick fiberglass shell would cost me 1200 Baht p/square meter...costly.
Quick estimate would bring that into the 3000 USD range only for the fiberglass.
From there, it will add up very quickly with everything else.

Bottom drain will be easy, same principle as before, concrete disk but with some modifications in how the airline and diffuser will be attached.
Thinking about putting the PVC diffuser inside the concrete totally flush with the top of the disk. Doing it that way, I'll have no worries about fish knocking it off.
Airline will not go center of the bottom-drain but next to it to maintain full drainage capacity.
 
Had one of those 'flash-bulb' moments last Sunday.
Don't need two pumps and all kind of interconnecting overflows...

If I can follow the setup I have in my factory, there's 4 separate ponds.
- Main Pond
- Settling Tank
- Bog
- Grow-Out/Koi pond
If I can't let the Grow-Out pond cascade back into to Main Pond, then the only thing I need to make sure is a large (3-4" diameter) pipe connecting the 2 with some kind of mesh wire cover to make sure fish can't go through.
The law of connecting vessels will then do the rest, with only 1 large pump or maybe 2 smaller ones in the Settling Tank to get the water pumped into the Bog-area. From there, gravity will feed the clean water into the Grow-Out pond and the pipe-connection will then get it into the main pond again.
Since the water is clean and without debris, there's not too much worry about clogging the pipe but will have some thoughts on it to make it fool-proof.
 
I hope some of you can help me with experience/suggestions for waterproofing the system.

I am leaning towards a combination of:
- waterproofing agent in the concrete
- waterproofing paint on top of that.
 
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