Day Four: Building The Box

Day Nine: Laying Sod

We dig the river out. In the pictures you can see that we will also have to sift all the dirt we dug up, dumping the rocks elsewhere.

In the first picture you see my dad, smiling, not knowing all the work ahead will be so exhausting and taking twice as long as expected. =)

We started about 9am.Once we were happy with the basic shape and size of the river and pond, we buried the return water pipe in the ground. The water will flow from the vertical white pipe down the waterfall, into the river and down to the pond, then returning to the waterfall.

It took several hours making mud and firmly shaping the ponds and riverbed. Then we added gravel.

The hole with the 3 pipes is where the pump will eventually go. One pipe to add water when needed, one pipe to pump water back to the waterfall, and the last pipe is for the power. We worked until about 7 P.M. that night.

We later added a floater to refill the river every morning to an exact depth.

We Build the box that will help shape the concrete walls. This takes all day because we are trying to make the gate to the box to fit a specific size of filter screen we bought.

We finally got the box that the pump will sit in done. The chicken wire is laid down on the river and ponds, so we are all set for cement.

In the book, it said a river needs 2inch of gravel, chicken wire, then 2inch of cement. That's the plan for tomorrow.

The exterior to the Under Ground Tunnels so got some fun decorations using mud and river rocks.

Around 9am we started putting down cement and putting the river rocks down as we go and wiping the rocks down to clean cement off.

Eventually we made our way to the waterfall part, we finished about 7pm.

All we did today was put a sealer on the river to help waterproof it, plus it's shinier now.

I took pictures of the box while dad was cleaning it up, and took the wood out to put the water proofing on.

Today we put up the wall. The wall for box turtles needs to be at least 4 inches into the ground, and high enough that the turtle's front legs can't touch the top.

You notice a screen put in the wall. This is to allow the water to flow out of the area and downhill, when we get rain and/or our occasional flash floods.

We also had to add another row of river rocks to the lower pond to raise it well above ground level, once again planning ahead for the occasional rain/flash flood storms we get.

The last picture is of the box with the screen in it. This way we are double filtering the return water as well as protecting the turtles from getting sucked into the pump area.

We planted another shrub to give the turtles another cool place to hide in the heat of the summer. We also finished up the automatic sprinklers, supplemented the soil and laid the sod grass.