Pond Builder – Who should I engage to build my Koi pond?

Over the past few months, I have received several similar queries from my blog visitors who asked me for recommendations on pond building contractors.

In South East Asia, most Koi ponds are concrete ponds. For a concrete pond, it is best to engage a professional or experienced Koi pond builder.

Pond building is an art and it is good to engage a koi pond specialist rather than rely on building contractor who may be experienced with building water features or swimming pool but not a Koi pond. Koi pond has special requirements on depth, filter design and size, pumps to use, location of venturi pipes and bottom drains, aeration, shape, even special black paint for the sides of the pond (not tiles) ....just to name a few.

Also, once a concrete pond is built, correction is difficult to make without risk of leaks. It is good for the contractor to show you some reference sites.

My first two ponds were built by a pond-contractor that was a subcontractor to a landscaping contractor. Being new, I have to depend on a contractor who can show me references of past projects done. 

My third pond was built by a contractor who did also did the alternation and additions (A&A) works for my house.  Although I was happy with my earlier pond contractor, I choose this new contractor for my third pond because the pond is “integrated” into my building design and my builder happens to be also in the Koi pond building business. You can compared the filter designs for the 3 ponds and see that the designs are very similar but the filter for 3^rd pond is probably the best of them all since I do not have the space constraint that I faced with my first 2 ponds. I reviewed the pond and filter design for my third pond based on my experienced with my first 2 ponds and proposed design by the contractor is very close to what I had in mind.

At the end, you still need to engaged a contractor you can trust. Get them to show you the proposed design and it should have the features of a good filter and attractive pond layout to suit your personal needs.