Building an Indoor Pond

To build an indoor pond had been a long time dream of mine. I call it a dream because it was not something that my better half would have approved under normal circumstances. Also, our house was not so big as to hold a real nice little pond (like a few I saw when doing some research on indoor ponds). However, I did have a nice sized basement, though already packed with game and gym apparatus, it still had enough room. I spent days wondering if this would be a good idea. One of my primary objectives was to build something to transfer my two Japanese Kois. They had been with me for about six years in a 135 gallon aquarium and were getting too big for it. I had two choices - to build a pond in my backyard or to build something indoor. The third option presented to me by my better half was by far the worst – to get rid of the fishes. No way! They had become like my children and I wasn’t about to let them go.

The choice that looked the best initially was definitely building a small 1000 gallon pond in my backyard. I had a relatively small backyard but yet big enough to create a 1000 gallon pond. The problems were two fold. First of all, I needed a way to tackle the freezing winter. Secondly, I would need a special setup for the pump and filter. It was possible to solve both but not very cheaply. After thinking hard I decided to move out of this option and go for a simpler and cheaper indoor pond option. That way I won’t have to worry about having an electric line in my backyard and spend extra electricity to keep the pond going in the winter (for gas exchange a small passage needs to be present all time).

After careful consideration I chose a corner in my basement that was holding an air hockey table. Kids sometimes played it so I needed to find a new place for it. That was easy.

However, there were multiple other important factors that I needed to consider.

• How big the pond should be?
• Would the basement be able to handle the huge load that the pond would put?
• What kind of pump and filter do I need?
• What about humidity?
• How costly was it going to be?
• And finally, exactly how to build it?

One of the common criteria for all my projects had always been to keep it low cost. My better half almost always categorized my projects as ridiculous. The only way to pacify her was to keep them easy on the wallet. This had not been easy over the years. Cheap solutions do not always work better and often not very pleasing to the eyes. But as long as the purpose served I was okay with it.

If you are interested in doing something like this then please pay good attention to all the details from here. I’ll answer each of the questions stated above one by one.

• How big the pond should be?
• I was aiming for a 500-600 gallon pond. The corner that I was targeting was 8 feet long and 4 feet in width. I settled for a size of 8 feet by 5 feet and 2.5 feet in depth. With 2 feet of water the total volume would roughly be 600 gallon, give or take.
• Would the basement be able to handle the huge load that the pond would put?
• Basements are usually built on a well drained bed of gravel or crushed stone by pouring concrete.  It should be able to handle large amount of load. In my case the calculation came up to be ~6000 pounds on a 40 sft area; 150 pounds per sft; little over 1 pound per 1 square inch. This is really not much of a load. [Every situation can be different. So, please take due diligence to ensure that the load can be bore by your floor. It is probably a good idea to do a strength test on the floor if you are in doubt. I would not suggest building a pond on any other floor than the basement though]
• What kind of pump and filter do I need?
• There are many types of pump and filter. I settled for something that would turn the water at least once an hour. I assumed I’ll have only my two Kois (9 years and 6 years old) and some gold fishes. That kind of filtering and water movement should be just fine. I spent about $300 on both.
• What about humidity?
• This is where I really got bogged. I read and read. Put my hygrometer (humidity measuring instrument) in the basement for several days to find out the average humidity (this will vary based on season being high in summer and low in winter).  
• I assumed that the pond would increase the humidity by additional 10-20%  based on how much water movement was in place and started to inquire what kind of negative impact that may have on the house. The findings were obviously not very encouraging. So, I decided to buy a dehumidifier. Extra cost but had little other choice. Another thing that I also considered was what could be the impact on the section of the first floor right above the pond. Over time the extra humidity can damage the hardwood floor. Fortunately for me I did not have hardwood floor on that specific part. Nevertheless I made a mental note to regularly check after the pond is built for any impact.  
• And finally, exactly how was I going to build it?
• Okay, now the main part. How to build one? I saw several ways people did it. One of the most popular ways is to use wooden structure. However, water is very heavy and unless built properly the structure could fail over time. So I needed a good, solid design.
• I know little about woodwork. I continued to look into the web and finally found something that I could work with. This is how I did it. You can try various variations of this but this would work fine. I do not have the original design as I did it almost a year ago but this is something that is fairly close.
• Once the framework was completed I used carpet and cloths at the bottom and specially at the corners before laying down the pond liner. After this the rest was really about filling it up, putting in the pump and filter and cover the open parts of the frame with nicer looking stuff (you can get pretty creative in this part). I did not care a whole lot about the look but if you don’t mind spending some more you can do all kind of stuff.

 Use 6x6 s for the four corner stands; connect them with 2x3 lumbers (pink). There is no one way of doing this . Just make sure the frame is very sturdy and doesn't move if you shove it lightly. In the outer side and inner side use strong, thick plywood (brown). The blue section is the part where you would put water in after  laying off the pond liner. 

I built it all alone from scratch in my basement over next 2 to 3 weeks after work. Bought whatever I needed. At the end things came out to be just fine. I wish I had taken some pictures but as always it is always an after thought. Here is the finished product.

So, I have the pond for more than a year. Everything seems to be going great. Couple of issues that I noticed:

• Humidity: It is not a problem in winter but in summer if I do not use the dehumidifier the humidity goes as high as 80% in the basement.
• Good water movement in the pond is a must otherwise algae starts to form on the inside walls of the pond. I use only a 30 watt florescent light for 5-6 hours at night. No direct sunlight reaches the pond.

New York City, New York

Most if not all of my trips are executed on short notice. This summer I had no plans to head toward New York City. However, something came up. We decided to go on a three day trip. The problem with such short trip is that most part of it is spent on the roads, driving. We started on Friday night; after work we had to visit a pre-marriage ceremony for one of my wife's relatives; that did not complete until 10 PM; by the time we hopped on to the highway 401 it was already 11:00 PM. My kids who are now 11 and 6 are never crazy about long drives but they liked the part that we were going to New York city. We had visited NYC couple of times before but only to visit relatives in their houses and hardly saw anything of the city - attractions and things like that.
      That night we stopped midway and stayed in a nice Holiday Inn with a Jacuzzi. We arrived at the hotel around 2 Am and none of us had any energy to get into the Jacuzzi though my wife seemed to really like it. Our plan was to start very early next morning. So, we brushed and went to bed. The night passed by in moments. We were all very tired.
Next morning we ate the continental breakfast that the hotel offered and went back to the road around 7 AM. Later than we planned for but we had to live with that. There was a reason for hurrying up. I was hoping to be in a Bangla book fair in NYC. They had asked me to be there by 3 PM so that I could hand over them my two books that I wanted to be introduced. It was going to be tight but we hoped for the best. With little to no traffic things started to look pretty good.

We took highway 81 and continued all the way until we hit 380. While the route is not spectacular but the views are descent and enough to keep an onlooker entertained with beautiful hills and lakes, rivers and creeks with crystal clear water.
         The worst part of the trip was when we arrived at the George Washington Bridge. It took us over three hours from there on to reach the book fair venue in Jamaica. It was already past 3 PM when we reached  there. However, a quick visit to the basement of the building where the fair was taking place filled me up with shear disappointment. The place looked barren with a handful of the publishers displaying their books with little to no audience. I looked for the organizers but was unable to find them. This is when we decided to move on and concentrate on NYC. Cutting the next series of activities short only to say we ended up going to Connecticut to my sisters place that night and returned to NYC the next morning with my sister and her 7 year old son for a day long visit.
       Let's see how that went.

Our first destination was the Nintendo World in Manhattan near Rockefeller center. My son had specifically requested for it. It was a Sunday and we were hoping to have less trouble finding a parking spot. Wrong! We went around and around for an empty spot but with no luck. Finally annoyed I parked the car in a garage almost next to the store for about 45 dollars for the rest of the day. For the time being the overpriced parking fee felt quite bad but later we realized it was in a way the best thing to do. With the car out of our way we could now travel much more freely using the vast underground railway system that New York City offered. It definitely added more to the cost but when you are in new York City all you really need to be thinking of is convenience and not ever never of money. If you do that mistake and if you are in a tight time frame you'll end up seeing nothing. Most of your time will go on to negotiating traffic.

The above image is on the wall near the Nintendo World. I found it interesting hence pictured it despite the deluge of 'Ewe's it received from the three kids who found it totally gross.

This is the Nintendo World. Not a very big place but nice and neatly organized. My son seemed to enjoy his time there. He purchased a game here as a souvenir.

 
Next was the Lego land nearby. This place was also not very big but was nice. There are several Lego structures that are very interesting. The one in the picture is of a snake that meanders through the store. Very nice. 

 Our next target was the Museum of Natural history located near the central park. Once we completed our ventures into the Nintendo world and Legoland we headed for the subway station. It wasn't easy though. After looking around for a little while I finally asked somebody who showed us the way.

Admittedly I wasn't prepared for the subway having planned to go around in a car. Now that we descended into the subway station we were all a little confused. We are from Toronto, a city which has a subway system with two different lines. I picked up a subway map of New York City and was instantly baffled at the mesh like huge system. Just figuring out where was what and how to get to a particular point seemed like a puzzle that could take days to solve. Attempting to get too much information from the Black lady sitting in the ticket booth only generated some annoyance, rightfully I guess as she must be bored to death answering questions of unprepared tourists and also there were several people lining up to buy tickets. Anyway, after much examination and research of the subway map we finally boarded a train that seemed to go in the general direction of where we were planning to go. I guess we looked readily out of place and a kind lady approached us and inquired about our intentions. This turned out to be extremely helpful as we found out that the train we were riding would not stop at the station next to the Museum in a weekend. We would have to get off in a junction and take another train. She graciously invited us to simply follow her as she and her company were heading the same direction. I had bad experience in New York from my visit there in two prior occasions but this simple case of kindness felt really good. Often a little bit of help makes a sea of difference. It saved us a lot of agony. With young kids in the group getting lost is never a good option. If nothing else the kids tend to make a very big deal out of such mishaps and are bound to spread it among all friends, families and acquaintances making it sound as if their dad is the most incapable person in the whole wide world. 

 

                               Museum of Natural History

Anyway, the Museum was very interesting. It is a large place with several  floors. Usually my kids are not big fan of Museums but they really loved it. 

Back in Toronto, I had researched quite a bit about all the attractions in New York City and found out that while there are plenty of them most if not all are very expensive to visit, and I mean irrationally expensive (it is possible that the cost of maintaining an attraction in the city can be very expensive). However, there are things like New York pass and several other tour packages that may cut down the overall cost quite a bit provided  you plan to stay there several days and visit several attractions because all of these passes and packages are required to be purchased before hand and are not cheap either.
Now, our plan was very short. So, we had to pick among all the choices we had. I felt one of the best way to actually see the New York City was to board the free Staten island Ferry. I read quite a bit about it in the web and after the Museum we headed for the Ferry Terminal.

This turned out to be the best time we had in New York City. The day was sunny, warm and breezy. The ferry terminal is a big facility. The kids were excited at the sight of the large ferries. While waiting along with hundreds of other people for the next ferry to come we got us some delicious ice cream from a ice cream vendor and relished on them.
Once the ferry arrived people streamed out of it and we boarded in. The whole operation went much quickly and smoothly than I thought it would go considering the huge crowd that gathered. The trip to the Staten Island took about 20 minutes. We had to get off the ferry and board another one to return. Overall, excellent experience. The views were astonishing.

                  A group of kids joined a musician on board of the ferry and sung Christian themed songs.



After Staten Island while we were traveling back to the Rockefeller Center we took an impromptu decision to get off the train a few stations early and walk through the so famous Times Square. There was another incentive - the Disney store, which obviously was a  big pull for my daughter. 

The store is located in a large two storied building with very good collection of toys and kids clothing. I particularly found the spinning Mary-go-around interesting, located right inside the store.

                                                                           The Times Square

The naked cowboy.He has turned out to be a celebrity.

The walk back to our parking spot through the downtown Manhattan was a great experience. It always feels great to visit a city and be among large crowd. It definitely gives a special significance to the overall experience. We returned to Connecticut without any incident. 

We started our trip back to Toronto next afternoon. Again, it was an exceptionally beautiful day. We had a long trip ahead of us but we felt quite content with our brief visit, especially all of us enjoyed our visit to the New York City and the kids had plenty to share with their friends. I settled down in my driving seat for a nine hour long driving stopping only to get gas and pick up lunch as we ate in the car to cut down travel time.

If you are heading to New York City any time soon, have a great time there!