I have many ponds for raising fish, water lilies, marginals, etc. But the little pond in my front yard is the only one there just to look nice. My wife designed it, dug it, and built it to my requirements (at least 12' wide, 3' deep). She's very cool that way.

A couple years ago we added a waterfall and outflow. Here's a link to the thread on the waterfall, and the outflow is pictured at the end of the post.
https://garden.org/thread/go/1...



Digging in my yard means uncovering boulders. All of the rocks used for decoration above (except for the flagstone pieces on top) came out of the hole. I live right next to a major river delta, so the ground is half river rock. Handy for decorating, not fun for digging or planting in.



We dropped in a stock tank and draped the liner into it, which we had left long on the ends and tucked under the rocks in case we ever wanted to do something like this.



At the bottom I placed a pump with a fancy two-layer intake filter, and then I stacked half sheets of matala filter mats, finest at the bottom and coarsest on top. You can just make out the top mat in this picture.



These not only filter the debris coming off the pond, but also provide a lot of biological filtration surface, which is important because of the koi in the pond.
https://garden.org/thread/go/1...

I did something different with the pump than I normally do, though. I used a DC sine wave pump of the type that I normally use in my aquaria. These are very efficient, don't involve high voltage in the water, and, for me, have shown a lot of endurance. The one I have in the greenhouse has been in operation for five years, circulating water in the koi fry tank.

The pump in the overflow is a DCP-18000 (google it for pictures and stats), and although it is protected from large particles by the filter attached to the intake, it has endured being choked by accumulating silt, and heavy air intake for long periods when the water level runs low. It remains at the bottom of the overflow tank in the winter when I shut the pump off, but it's pretty deep, and I don't think the ice has ever reached down to it. This is our third season with it.

It does, however, have an electronic control box that generates the DC sine waves and controls the speed of the pump. And on hot days, it overheats, shutting down the pond pump for intervals right when I most want water exchange. The cable connections to the pump are short, built for placement on an aquarium stand. I've tried in vain to find compatible connectors (I've seen extension cords that work for the smaller versions of this pump, but the larger pump models have a rather unique version of the connector). Because the cables are so short, I can't get them far enough away from the pond to a cooler spot.

Finally this year I decided to simply wire in a new cable.



The four wires on the left go to the DC power brick, and the three wires on the right go to the pump. I desoldered the three and soldered in a new cable that I fed through the water proof grommet. I moved up to 14 gauge wire, since I was adding significant length to the cable. Then I used a waterproof junction to attach the other end to the old connector, allowing me to still disconnect the cable at the pump end, should I need to.



The AC power plug, a home automation wifi switch, the power brick, and the DC controller box all went into a weather-proof box in the shade.



So far, the pump runs well, and no issues when the sun comes out. I'm calling this a success. Next steps will be to dig a trench, run the cables through conduit, and set up a larger, permanent control box for all the electronics. One step at a time...