| How to hire someone to build your Backyard Water Garden |
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Hiring a professional pond installer usually ensures that your investment will be enjoyable and built with the reputation and guarantee of the experienced pond builder. Before you hire anyone, however, you should have a good idea of what pond style you'd like to own. You'll also want to see ponds the prospective contractor has built and ideally, you should interview some of the pond owners to see if the construction has held up and the maintenance required has met or exceeded their expectations.
A skilled contractor can do wonders to make sure your investment will be both enjoyable and trouble-free. They should be capable of building artistically beautiful features that reflect their skills and love of their business, without compromising the long-term value and engineering of the water feature. They also usually work fast without any significant damage to other aspects of your landscape. The following questions for the pond buyer and for the contractor are not all-inclusive but should help you find a qualified pond designer/builder.
Your installer should be able to help you with ALL of these questions, so don't be overly concerned if these questions make you uncomfortable because you do not know the answers. 1. What type of pond are you looking for: A water garden, a koi pond, or a combination koi and water garden or some other decorative water feature that does not have fish or plants? 2. Can you locate a water feature that you can ask the installer to duplicate and either show him pictures, video or maybe even visit the feature with your installer? 3. If you haven't been on a pond walk in your hometown or in many of the cities across America, you owe it to yourself to attend one or more of these events. Dates for pond tours appear in many of the water gardening and koi magazines. 4. Do you also want a waterfall or a stream? 5. What approximate dimensions for the feature are desired? 6. What is your budget? Be up front with the installer. Do not make them do a design for a pond that you will never be able to afford. They should be able to tell you a range of how much the ponds in their portfolio cost to build. If your wishes exceed your budget, they can tell you how the job can be done over a period of years. 7. Maintenance questions: Will you do your own pond maintenance or hire someone? How much time or how much money will you budget for maintenance? Typical pond maintenance times are similar to maintaining the same area of landscaping. Tips on contractor selection: 1. Is the company insured and bonded? 2. What are his credentials? How many years has he been in business? How many water features has he built and for how long has he been building them? 3. Insist on seeing examples of the prospective installer's work. You should not have to see too many waterscapes to gain confidence in the installer's capabilities. Do more that just review their portfolio...visit the water feature. 4. During your visit to view the installers work, pay attention to various aspects of the design. In particular, look for their edge treatments. Are the edges stable? Are they natural and attractive or is the pond edge just a pile of rocks? Is there edge treatment variety? What kinds of filters were used? How well are they working and how much maintenance is required to keep them functioning? How well are they hidden? 5. Depending on your level on interest and budget, consider visiting both newer and older established water features to see how older examples of their work hold up over the years. 6. How is replacement water handled? Through an automatic fill valve or manually by a hose? 7. What kind of guarantee does the contractor/installer offer? Is it in writing and part of his contract? 8. If possible, meet with the waterscape owner for first hand knowledge of some of these areas. From the owner and contractor/installer find out what they would do differently if they could do the project all over again? Perhaps some of those ideas will apply to your installation. 9. Does the contractor provide a maintenance manual for his installation? 10. Does he use bottom drains that re-circulate the bottom water? 11. Does the pond need to be drained each year for a more thorough cleaning? 12. Find out the time period required for installation and how soon they can start. |