Ephemeral pond design

An "ephemeral" design since, as a battle plan rarely survives first contact with the enemy, I anticipate that the pencil-on-paper pond design will not survive much beyond first contact with the reality of the hole in our side yard.   

Being illiterate in CAD, to the left is a basic design published by Oase on which I superimposed the proposed dimensions of our pond (click on it to see a larger image).  This design is not too far different from what we are planning.

Since you found this blog, I'll assume that you have some familiarity with the concept of a natural swimming pool.  Our pond will utilize a pump to draw water through four suction lines -- one from a skimmer and three from 4" diameter perforated flexible hose ("drain tile") buried  in the gravel of the regeneration zone.  The pump will discharge to two lines -- one to a waterfall and one to a discharge line in the deep zone.  Our dock and skimmer will be at the northeast corner of the pond (to take advantage of the prevailing wind from the southwest), while the waterfall and pump will be at the northwest corner.

Most of the regeneration zone will be about 9' wide and consist of natural cobble and gravel 2" to 4" in size.   The regeneration zone on the south side of the pond will be a large beach area of "micro-mini" pea gravel for kids to play in and to provide comfortable access to the deep zone.  Since the beach is larger in square footage, two lengths of drain tile will draw water through that area while one length of drain tile will be used elsewhere.

How did we size our pond?  Basically, we decided that a 45' pond would look nice in our side yard and that a 16' x 28' swim area would be adequate.  From the reading I have done, I believe the regeneration zone should have a square footage at least as large as the swim zone.  Our regeneration zone will be nearly three times the size of our swim zone so we should have plenty of excess filtering capacity.  Initially I planned on a smaller pond since the maximum EPDM pond liner width is 50', which effectively limits pond width to 30'.  Fortunately our excavator contractor Brian proposed that we cut 10' from my already purchased 50' x 75' liner and splice it to give a 60' width -- a great idea that will give us enough width for the beach area without having to shrink the size of our swim zone!