Most Popular Fish-Safe Pond Liner for Small Koi Ponds and Water Gardens

The first thing you want to do is make sure the pond liner is fish-safe. That is vital. Fish-safe liners come in many different thicknesses which are made out of different material. The most popular for a koi pond or water garden are 45 mil EPDM rubber pond liners. These liners are very thick - about 1/8" and so are very pliable and 'rubbery'. They remind you of a bicycle inner tube, but thicker. They can be found in various sizes with dimensions which are divisible by 5'. For instance, a 10' x 10' pond liner would come pre-boxed and prepared to ship. Pond liners around 400 square feet (for instance a 20' x 20' liner) can be shipped via UPS. Larger, 45 mil EPDM liners which are heavier and packaged differently, require shipment via motor freight and can be found in rolls with the biggest size being 50' x 100', all without trouble. These rolls are usually transported to the pond site with a front end loader with a fork that fits in to the opening of the roll that the liner is rolled on. These liners can weigh 1,500 pounds or even more and once at the website, are rolled out near the pond's edge and strategically placed in to the excavated area.

Most Popular Fish-Safe Pond Liner for Large Fish Ponds


There are a couple of options for those people who are looking to build a large fish pond or water garden where they might require a liner larger than 50' x 100'. In this case, the 2 2 hottest options are to buy 2 or even more rolls of the 50' x 100' 45 mil EPDM pond liner (or whatever size you will need) and splice them together (see below for splice information) or buy a different kind of liner that comes in a much bigger size and is made all without trouble! I'll explain the two options further so that you can decide which sounds probably the most appealing to you.

How to Splice Two 45 mil EPDM Pond Liners Together

Although there are step-by-step procedures that one must follow to splice 2 bits of 45 mil EPDM liner together, in a 'nutshell' what you must do is lay both pieces on a very flat surface such as plywood or for larger applications, a set parking lot or driveway. You unroll each liner and carefully overlap one edge of the liner on the edge of another liner. Ideally, this overlapped area should be about 6" wide for along both liners. A two-sided, sticky, EPDM pond liner tape (called a splice tape) is then rolled out onto the edge of the bottom liner which has recently been carefully cleaned and primed. The edge of the top liner, which has also been cleaned and primed is carefully laid onto underneath liner. The spliced area (ie; overlapped area) is then rolled with a roller to produce a tighter seal. In https://penzu.com/p/143f6641 , an EPDM pond liner cover strip that is approx. 6" wide and has one side that's sticky, is then adhered over the seam joint from the two 2 spliced liners. Next, a bead of rubber caulking made specifically from the maker who created the 45 mil EPDM liner, is ran along both edges of the cover strip. After https://telegra.ph/Build-YOUR-PERSONAL-Backyard-Pond---Whats-the-most-affordable-Method-06-02 of drying, the liner may then be moved into place. You can splice as much pondliners as you want together to be able to create the correct size of liner you will need for your application.

The advantage of having a big, 45 mil EPDM pond liner is that it is a heavy-duty liner and is 'rubbery' gives it greater flexibility and 'forgiveness' with any protruding rocks that may surface from the already prepared and raked out area for the pond. The downfall of utilizing a 45 mil EPDM pond liner for larger applications is that it's heavy which requires higher shipping costs and more manpower to move it into place.

24 Mil Woven, Polyethylene Pond Liners

24 mil woven, polyethylene pond liners are great liners for very large ponds whether they're for large koi ponds, water gardens, large fish ponds or for aquaculture uses. They offer great strength and so are light weight. Unlike other polyethylene liners that simply stack layers after layers on top of one another in the manufacturing process, this polyethylene liner is woven together gives it more strength. Another huge benefit to this liner is that it's tailor made to size and will come all without trouble around 65,000 square feet! Pretty sweet for a big pond application!

Unlike PVC pondliners which are in the marketplace for large fish ponds, the 24 mil woven, polyethylene liner doesn't require 12" of soil on top of it to protect it from UV rays. This particular liner is UV stabilized so that it can last for years! Because they're lighter weight, they are cheaper to ship and require less man power to maneuver. They're only offered in larger sizes and do not come pre-boxed like the 45 mil EPDM liners do. https://diigo.com/0sshdg woven, polyethylene liner is custom made to size in increments of 5'.