i had wonted to get into water gardening and pond installation and was wondering how would i figure out how much to charge to do something like this. where would be a good place to learn more about water garden and pond installations.
Aquascape Designs is a good place to start. Do a couple of classes. Then don't forget the 'Pond Builders Bible'.
Yup Do your own first. Keep track of materials and time. Doing yours first lets you work out the kinks and now you have a picture of one that you did. Don't have to say it is your's or your first, only that it is the first picture you took of one you did.....
Ditto on what GLAN said, + you can use it as a "Test Ground" for different products and things like such.
I did 2 at our place to get the feel of it. Especially after all the hype about filters. But I did ours withour filters and found that the water stays crystal clear most of the year once its system gets balanced. Then in two books by two experts, they indicated that filters are not needed if fish will not be included. The home pond showed us how fast the pond plants cleared the water after it started to cloud a bit. Although that was the back pond. The front pond stayed clear continously for 2 years without any plants, and a couple of goldfish. A good mortar training area too.
mdvaden, Can you describe your filter less ponds? I am curious how that works. I use a under-gravel filter system I build from scratch that uses the surface area of the rocks and pea-gravel in both the stream bed and pond bottom to filter.
