Material Needed for Reservoir Liner

Need to get hold of some clay then.

Diaphanous Earth? Diaphanous earth is applied to large farm sized ponds in powder form, when wet it becomes a nearly impervious gel...which sticks to your feet with pounds of slime, disturbs the water retention quality, muddies the pond and is generally miserable.There is also a variety of Koi pond clay pellets called Calcium Montmorillonite, and calcium bentonite, which claim not to cloud the water.

This is not a bad point however, there are lots of clays out there and they truly work for water retention. The last property I worked on had a heavy clay soil. It came in very handy for tamping the floor of the pond and could be sculpted into steps and seats which held their shape like cement beneath the liner. Great stuff. In fact, now that you mentioned this, I will look into it further. It is occurring to me that perhaps I have not exhausted this line of research.

Thank you very much. D Upton Upton Studios LLC

Diaphanous means fine-grained. Bentonite would be a better choice sodium bentonite is ideal, since it is dispersed and the permeability is a couple of orders of magnitude lower, maybe as low as 10^-9 cm/s. You can purchase the bentonite pellets or powder in 100 lb sack or so, just like concrete. Place a lyer in an over excavated pond bottom. Bentonite and all 2:1 clays will suffer severe shrink swelling as moisture content changes (wetting and drying), so it is best to place a layer below an overlying soil layer to minimize the effects of drying the pond. this will still leak a very small amount, and is usually a self repairing liner assuming no major penetrations (cracks swell up and seal off). Alternately you can obtain textured synthethic and geosynthetic liners that can have a soil layer placed over them (the side slopes are limited to line 2:1 or shallower). Concrete alone can achieve abot 10^-7 cm/sand can be utilized. Mix and match, use a sythetic/geosythetic liner on bottom, sand then a bed of rocks, and for steep sidewall use a layer of grout overlain with a layer of rock mortared together. Or for simplicity use sodium bentonite/fine sand/grout/rock mortared.

I love your girlfriends diatomaceous nightgown :)

Alright, not only do I like the taste of my foot, but i dress well too. D

I did some digging into the clay. I was completely off the wall. Well, not completely, but just the same,

It is Bentonite Clay that lines large ponds. It works great but is not suitable for a swimming feature because of the behavior I described.

Diatomaceous earth is sometimes used as a filtering material. Diaphraminious earth is the same as saying "I resemble that remark" or up the gitsfrizzel with a duofrater.

If only I had the intelligence to be embarassed.

How wrong can you be and still eat lunch. D

liners are usually made of recycled material and they add UV absorbers to make them resist breakdown. These are often black compounds that absorb broadly = cheaply. It costs more to make a green liner that absorbs UV than a black one.

Consider what it is made from. In essence plastic is made from oil with a lot of processing, so if oil goes up, so does plastic. Liners are thicker that .45 mil = .00045"

Paint is thicker than .45 mil.

They make them solid color, can you imagine the problem with peeling paint on a liner in the water = you need underwater paint.

Who wants a black hole full of water in their yard? A Newark pool, add some oil on the surface for verité

Pools are painted with light color for a reason, people want those colors. They have converged onto a turquoise color for a very good reason = what you see in any tropical water body.

Okay on input number one, why they are black. Gottcha

I am measuring incorrectly on input number two. I have installed extensive pond liners and use what feels like rubber the thickness of an inner tube. It is heavy, but flexible and stands up to most abrasions. It says 45mils, it also comes in 60. It seems I put the period in the wrong place...Thought maybe you would have made that assumption.

Pond liner also seam's well, this last water feature was L shaped with an island, and a stream leading to a swimming hole. We seamed the entire thing. It holds water better than I do. It also works being black because I designed the rest of it to support that color. Which opens up a marketable field.

On input number three, They do have liners with all sorts of wonderful designs printed into the vinyl, they even make a new one with rocks around the walls. You can get a common kiddy pool with sharks on it a Walmart. They are getting the idea, but it still a long way from what American's love the most...custom designs.

On input number four and five...I have been to the tropics, I have seen the lovely aqua blue water, snorkeled the reef and pulled my fare share of quills out of my butt. However, I, and nearly everyone I know grew up somewhere else with swimming holes. Of course it is possible that some of my ancestors are still at the bottom of a tar pit in Newark but I doubt it, and that my dear, was a very terse comment on your part.

Most of the people in this country grew up with lakes, rivers and ponds. The offer of these features instead of the status heavy, over priced, glaringly pristine stereotypical swimming pool is inviting. We have a tendency to look back for healing, old remedies, the good old days when life was simple. The philosophy of returning to nature is in vogue again... and the day of the big blue cement pool is changing.

With technology being what it is, not everyone wants what comes off the shelf. Not anymore. Our world has become more custom than standard. Swimming ponds and water features are rapidly becoming the "tickle me Elmo" item of the new millenium. I predict that in the next ten years 40% of the homes in this country will have water features. I am on the very cusp of a new custom pool idea, don't knock it. This is how things get invented. Oh, and by the way...Pools are taxable but so far ponds are not. Pools are usually a non-plus item in resale of a home, Ponds add value to a property.

You have been fun to talk too, however the next time you answer a question, please have some actually information ready, and do not assume that the person asking a question is mentally challenged.

D Upton, Upton Studios LLC

Well, I do not assume you are mentally challenged, as you proclaim, :)

Swimming pools have gone through a long period of evolution (non Darwinian) in the market place.

People want to see where they leap. They want to see the bottom. Safety concerns auger that a fallen in person/object be clearly visible. You can buy and install artificial ponds that meet your objectives. I am not sure there will be a brisk business in those that are large enough to bve swimming pools

I have installed heap leach pools are they are invariably a black UV resistant synthetic because you want decades of endurance under alkaline PH in bright sun.

One thing we learned...cover it with floating balls, fully packed. reduces evaporation and stops birds from landing on it (where they soon die from cyanide)

Thank you. Excellent. You also have a good sense of humor i see. i should go check on my tar pit relatives.

You are so correct that there has been and evolution in pool design, a balance between beauty and practicality. I am thinking that the greater evolution has taken place in the materials. Pools today do not seem to be much different than old Roman baths. But hey, I said we look back for healing, how far back do you want to go.

*watch out for typos and forgive me, I had shoulder surgery yesterday and am typing with my feet.

The current selection of liners is based on the old paradigm of pool design, everything from Gunite to vinyl. They work well too, but the last estimate check I did with regional pool companies brought in a price of 50 grand for a custom designed swimming pond no bigger than 18x28 feet. Just the pond, not deck, no pavers no landscaping.

Using black pond liner i can bring this design in for under 5 thousand right down to the sweating glass rings on the pool side table. See my point? If I can locate a material and a paint that will work together under water, I can offer upgrades. You understand upgrades, with upgrades there is enough fat in this concept to make it worth my while to tear my other shoulder open.

I have to go now, I'm seeing stars. Thank you so much for your time, i appreciate everything you can teach me.

D Upton

ahhh ... aurizon

regarding the 45 mil material (it IS 45 and not .45)

that would be .045" for your standard EPDM pond liner material. Also available in .060".

The urethane emulsion often used to colour these membranes will go on in coatings of approx. .008" each.

There is a company in Seattle that has developed equipment to spray polyurea for just this purpose. Have you investigated this option?

NO. That is why I asked you fellas. I am familiar with Krylon as I mentioned but I have never heard of this. Do you have any further information? D Upton, Upton Studios llc

Thank you in advance, for taking the time to consider my question. As my father always said "you are a gentleman and a scholar"

Almosr every building material outlet in the country sells "visquene" an opaque poly sheeting material available in many thicknesses. This material becomes almost clear when submerged in water.

You can always try painting the reverse side of the material so that the paint is protected from the wear and tear of usage.

There are thousands of pools, ponds and resevours that are lined with plastic covered with a layer of dirt or sand. I would think that this is about as "Natural" as anyone could want.

Visquene. Never heard of it, our local outlets only offer window plastic in 4 & 6 mil. I was trying to locate this material in the thickness needed but just drew blank faces. Perhaps I would be better off going to outlets who sell strictly to professionals, they would know of this material.

the reverse painting idea is brilliant. I have done this on window plastic for small projects but did not topple to it as an alternative for a pond liner. The sand base would also give me the correct "ground" no pun intended, for the color and design.

Thank you so much for your valuable input. i am excited about this suggestion and thrilled that the material I wanted is out there. I just knew it. I just had to ask the right people. D Upton

PrBerry,

I have been trying to track down "visquene" could you offer a manufacturer's name? I have tried a list of manufacturers on the net as well as several of my own sources.So far, not a single source has heard of this material. D Upton

Sometimes the best solution comes from garbage. In this case a product called grass tacs. Invented back in the 1980's by the University of Wisconsin. Take an old tire spray with nitrogen and grind off the rubber from the cord. In the frozen state the rubber wants to heat up. Spray crystallent pigment. Pigment is absorbed. Add a thermal set latex polimer. Spray in place. Take propane torch to set. This how it was done back when I saw it applied to tracks.

Have you contacted any of the HDPE liner material manufacturers? The only HDPE liner I have used in landfill construction is black but I have seen the same material produced as pipe in a gray color. Sorry, can't help much with painting. The only thing that comes to me is the spray liners applied to pickup trucks. I have seen coloration and design work I would never have suspected. In itself it is a thick liner and might just adhere to a properly prepared liner surface. Just a thought.

In your information you leave out critical details like size, "Area" depth what is going behind the liner. You say swimming but you also said reservoir the two are quite different animals. If you could just fill in the blanks. It always helps to know as much as possible. Are you intending to sell do it your self kits or set up a company to do the installation?

Hi Brainwave, thank you for stopping by.

It is a natural swimming hole that I wish to paint to actually look like a swimming hole. I cannot find swimming pool liner in sheets that will work. They come ready made, and have patterns in the vinyl that do not work for this project.

The "pond" "pool" "swimming hole," is 18x28 feet, 5' deep in the deep end and 3.50' in the shallows. It is an irregular shape and there is one area designed to taper gradually into the pond like a ramp, which I would like to paint to look like beach. I really wish I could share the designs. I will probably end up with regular black pond liner. If there is a paint out there that will stick and stay that you know of please let me know. Thanks D