Pond Maintenance: Get Your Pond Ready for Summer!

Pond maintenance is par for the course if you want to enjoy an urban oasis. Are ponds high maintenance? Yup; but there’s a secret to keeping algae at bay if you continue to read. That will help keep maintenance during the season to a minimum.

Opening up the pond for the season is a dirty job. But somebody has to do it – and thankfully, it’s not me! I’m happy to take my place behind the camera to help show you how it’s done 🙂

Pond Maintenance Video

If you’d like to see live footage of the transformation our little garden oasis, check out this quick video:

Flashback to last Fall: we tie off the grass (to be cut down in the Spring) and cover the pond to protect it from the elements. This is how we leave it over the winter:

Spring cleaning isn’t just for inside: get your pond summer ready with our how-to | Birdz of a feather | pond | pond maintenance #pond #birdzofafeather.ca

Pond Maintenance – The Unveiling

It’s been an unusually cold and rainy Spring. Finally, two days ago Hubs hightailed it home early to take advantage of a rare break in the dreary weather. Off comes the plywood and the foam insulation that keeps the water in the pond from completely freezing and cracking the liner.

Tools of the Trade for Pond Maintenance

Initial must-haves for this messy job are rubber gloves, a mask (good thing there’s no smell-o-vision!), scrub brush, pond skimmer, rags and a pump of course to drain what has become a motley brew of algae and bacteria.

Spring cleaning isn’t just for inside: get your pond summer ready with our how-to | Birdz of a feather | pond | pond maintenance #pond #birdzofafeather.ca

How Do I Clean the Bottom of My Pond?

Pump it Up – and Out!

Hubs starts by skimming off as much leave litter as he can to prevent the pump from clogging. We may have discovered the cure for cancer in that concoction, but we’ll never know! Then he sets the pump into the pond and turns his attention to the front pond while the back one drains.

Spring cleaning isn’t just for inside: get your pond summer ready with our how-to | Birdz of a feather | pond | pond maintenance #pond #birdzofafeather.ca

Bide Your Time!

The front pond lifts out easily for cleaning and the turtle spitter is going well within the time it takes to drain the back pond. The flagstone is only loosely positioned at his time around the perimeter of the pond. Once we get another nice day, we’ll power wash both the flagstone and the travertine marble patio in the back to clean it up too. The crevices of the travertine really catch the dirt as you can see two pictures above!

Keep a Watchful Eye

Keep an eye on the pump to ensure that the level of the water doesn’t get too low; you don’t want to take a chance of burning out the motor!

At the second stage of the process, you’ll need several buckets (large and small) and a jug with a handle to scoop. Hubs cut out a larger hole in the jug as you see below to get out the last vestiges of pond water.

Scrub-a-Dub

Now the pump comes out and the gruelling work really begins. When it gets to the point where the water level is too low for the pump (or too much debris on the bottom), you have to dump the buckets by hand.

Hubs hand bombs the shallow water into a bucket using his ‘upcycled’ scoop. I stopped counting at 10 buckets of water! Is it any wonder I can’t stomach ‘green’ drinks?!

After the last bucket is removed  it’s time to do the final wipe down of the liner.

Hubs mops up every last bit of water at the bottom…..

… and squeezes it into a smaller pail, which then gets transferred into the larger one.

Rinse and Repeat

The liner is hosed down with fresh water. A scrub sponge is then used to wipe down the bottom and sides of the liner to remove the last of the algae: we don’t use any kind of cleaning solution at all to keep chemicals to a minimum.

A new rag is used to wipe up the remaining water.

Spring cleaning isn’t just for inside: get your pond summer ready with our how-to | Birdz of a feather | pond | pond maintenance #pond #birdzofafeather.ca

Finally, I can breathe through my nose again without gagging!

Then the process of refilling the pond begins.

We aim to fill the pond to around the 3/4 mark.This time of year, mother nature will do the rest.

Spring cleaning isn’t just for inside: get your pond summer ready with our how-to | Birdz of a feather | pond | pond maintenance #pond #birdzofafeather.ca

Once the water is at a decent level, the pump can go in. In the early iteration of our pond, we used to have a more elaborate set-up with a bowl centre-piece but as we’ve gotten older it was becoming too heavy to haul in and out each year. Now, we keep it simple with this configuration:

If you haven’t read the post on how we DIY’d two versions of our pond, for this iteration Hubs attached the pump to the top of a milk crate we purchased from a local grocery store.  The underside is weighed down by two stainless steel rods strapped to the side with plastic ties.

The fountain is set in place, the crate is lowered into the pond and centred.

Spring cleaning isn’t just for inside: get your pond summer ready with our how-to | Birdz of a feather | pond | pond maintenance #pond #birdzofafeather.ca

Our Own Fountain of Youth

It’s not the fountain of youth in the fokelore sense by any means: I’m not suggesting that we drink from it! But it’s a fountain of youth in the sense that at least it’s keeping Hubs limber!

The cord gets plugged into a post where our electrical is attached, which practically becomes hidden later in the season once the grasses grow.

How Do You Keep Water Quality in a Pond?

When we visited the botanical gardens in Naples we asked them how they maintain their gorgeous pond and they shared a key step with us.

Ever since then, to help keep algae to a minimum we add a non-toxic blue dye* to the water. If it works for the huge expansive pond at the botanical gardens, it’ll work for small ponds too! It works by filtering out the sunlight which makes it harder for algae to develop.

Because this stuff is super concentrated, we have to be careful that we don’t drip it on the surrounding patio stones! To further suppress algae growth, Hubs comes back in the evening and adds another additive to the water to further clarify the pond. I know I’ll get questions about what he uses, so I’ll be sure to update this post.

Spring cleaning isn’t just for inside: get your pond summer ready with our how-to | Birdz of a feather | pond | pond maintenance #pond #birdzofafeather.ca

The last step is to clean the pump with fresh water.

Pond Maintenance Clean Up

Finally, Hubs cleans his boots, gloves and buckets with an all-natural cleaner called Benefect Botanical Decon 30. It’s specially formulated to kill gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria in just 30 seconds. That, and the fact that it doesn’t require rinsing,  makes it the quickest part of the whole process!

Spring cleaning isn’t just for inside: get your pond summer ready with our how-to | Birdz of a feather | pond | pond maintenance #pond #birdzofafeather.ca

Fast forward later in the Spring, after we’ve power washed and the plants start to grow:

Spring cleaning isn’t just for inside: get your pond summer ready with our how-to | Birdz of a feather | pond | pond maintenance #pond #birdzofafeather.ca

The blue dye not only keeps algae at bay, it’s also quite attractive to look at!

Pin Pond Maintenance

With a bit of work up-front, it’s all worth it in the end! The payoff is we get to enjoy our little piece of urban oasis for the rest of the season!

Pinning is always welcome and appreciated!

Get your DIY mojo on at Birdz of a Feather by subscribing to us here (link in the footer). You can also follow us on Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

* [If you’re looking for some of the things we used, we’ve got you covered (disclosure): Clicking on the affiliate links in this post means we may receive a commission. But don’t worry, you don’t pay a cent more and it helps us make more unique crafts to share with you! Thanks for helping to support our blog!]

20 thoughts on “Pond Maintenance: Get Your Pond Ready for Summer!

  1. Love your maintenance steps! Try using a shop vac to get the gunk out all the way to the bottom, sure saves my back when cleaning our pond.

    • Thanks Kaye! Hubs prefers not to use the wet/dry vac because the hose is hard to clean and it uses energy but it would definitely save the back! It’s a great idea?

  2. Ooh, I love that blue dye. I need to talk to my husband about that. It’s so pretty.

    • Don’t you love it when something has both form and function!

  3. I have not tried it as yet. I am real excited that you love your pond as much as I do. I have koi fish. I put them out in the spring. Bring them inside in the winter. I definitely will try the blue dye. I will start next week as the weather is getting warmer. I live in NYC the bronx. Thank you so much you have inspired me to get to work. Have a Blessed summer. Carlotta

    • Thanks Carlotta; I’m so happy to hear that our posts are inspirational! We haven’t had the courage to try Koi fish; I fear the wild life will nab them! Is there anything you do to protect yours?

  4. All that hard work is definitely worth it. Your pond is so lovely. It looks like the perfect spot to enjoy beautiful summer days. We have three ponds in the garden and it’s such a mission to get them cleaned up. The big one on our stoep needs a clean as we speak and I know my hubby is giving it the hairy eyeball, because he hates cleaning the thing. I’m going to tell him about the blue stuff too. Hopefully we can find it here in South Africa.

    • It is worth it, but it’s a young person’s chore. Not sure what we’ll do when Hubs is not as sprightly – lol!

      If you do find the blue stuff, just be careful not to accidentally drip it where you don’t want it! That stuff is highly concentrated. Your cute mossy creatures could turn into smurfs :).

    • Thank you – it really is a wonderful spot for R’n R!

  5. I would love to have a pond! They are so soothing and relaxing. What great tips for cleaning it! Thanks for sharing!

    • Once you start, you can’t stop. We’ve now got two and I’d keep going if we didn’t run out of property. I know I’ll come up with a way to add another though – lol!

    • We’re so glad we built it; we get a lot of birds stopping by for a drink. It really is a happening spot in the garden – lol!

  6. What a great transformation. I gave up on my pond and filled it in because it was too much work to maintain and it kept become home to lots of frogs. It looks so beautiful all cleaned up. great job. And a good man you got there doing all the work. lol,

    • There may come a day when we have to fill it in because Hubs isn’t so sprightly anymore – lol. Until then we sure do enjoy it! I love watching the ‘birdz’ drop in for a drink 🙂

  7. Thanks so much for all the tips and tricks. My kids have a pond on their back yard and this is perfect for them. I am excited to share it with them. The blue concentrate is an awesome idea. Thanks, Sara.

Leave a Reply