# Pond idea help please.



## mort (21 Mar 2018)

Long story short I was digging for a vegetable patch at my brothers new house and discovered the previous owners asbestos garage. A few less than fashionable suits and respirators later and it's clear but don't want to put anything planty there so it's going to be a pond.
The asbestos mine was part of a soakaway with a few tonnes of rubble so was considering directing the drain pipes into the pond as a top up system. The catchment area is a (guessing) 6x5m garage with felted roof, and pond likely to be a couple of thousand litres at most. I know from researching the roof material that it's safe but was wondering if large influxes of rain water into a relatively small pond would be problematic? It's only going to be a wildlife pond and likely extremely heavy planted.


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## Tim Harrison (21 Mar 2018)

Sounds like a good project. I doubt a decent input of rainwater will be a problem at all.


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## Andrew Butler (21 Mar 2018)

mort said:


> Long story short I was digging for a vegetable patch at my brothers new house and discovered the previous owners asbestos garage. A few less than fashionable suits and respirators later and it's clear but don't want to put anything planty there so it's going to be a pond.
> The asbestos mine was part of a soakaway with a few tonnes of rubble so was considering directing the drain pipes into the pond as a top up system. The catchment area is a (guessing) 6x5m garage with felted roof, and pond likely to be a couple of thousand litres at most. I know from researching the roof material that it's safe but was wondering if large influxes of rain water into a relatively small pond would be problematic? It's only going to be a wildlife pond and likely extremely heavy planted.


If I'm understanding this correctly you found the old asbestos garage underground acting as a soakaway for the current 6x5m garage, you now want to dig a pond and have the water that comes off the current garage roof drain into the pond?
If you have the space you could always put a water butt in place with an overflow and make use of the water on the garden or pond when water levels are low - you could even link several together.


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## sciencefiction (21 Mar 2018)

I am not sure what you want to do exactly but google "asbestos toxicity".


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## tam (21 Mar 2018)

I shouldn't think it will be an issue for a wildlife pond, it's perfectly normal for some areas at some times to be rapidly turning over with rainwater. You might also want to consider a water butt or two though for watering the veggies.


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## mort (22 Mar 2018)

sciencefiction said:


> I am not sure what you want to do exactly but google "asbestos toxicity".



That's why we had the unfashionable suits and respirators, it's now gone to wherever they dispose of it. The shed just has a normal roof made of non toxic material thankfully.


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## mort (22 Mar 2018)

Andrew Butler said:


> If I'm understanding this correctly you found the old asbestos garage underground acting as a soakaway for the current 6x5m garage, you now want to dig a pond and have the water that comes off the current garage roof drain into the pond?
> If you have the space you could always put a water butt in place with an overflow and make use of the water on the garden or pond when water levels are low - you could even link several together.



Spot on. We already have a hole from where the asbestos and surrounding soil was removed plus two drain pipes piped going into the hole. On one downpipe there are two 300 l water butts in series but I'm not sure how much of the water they take from the downtube when it rains (they have one of those connectors that goes into the pipe rather than the pipe going into it). I might just change it so the butts fill up and overflow into the pond, I was just considering if the rain water chemistry might disturb the pond chemistry for such a small volume compared to large catchment area.


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