Koi Fish Pond

My husband and I had been looking for a new house for the past few months. We had viewed plenty of houses, none of which were meeting our criteria. We finally found the perfect house that met 90%  of what we were looking for. The house was in a great neighborhood, had an open floor plan, and room to grow. There was just one small problem, the previous owner had a Koi Fish Pond in the backyard. Now we aren't against having ponds in the backyard, we just didn't want the responsibility of having one. Plus the previous owner was taking the fish that were in the pond, so we would be left with an empty pond. In our contract we had agreed that the previous owner would take all the materials for the pond and then fill in the hole with dirt and put grass over the dirt. He agreed and said he would fill in the hole and cover it up. With that being settled we were excited about moving into our new house.



The next few months we settled into the house. Everything was coming together and it was starting to feel like home. We were hanging on the back porch one evening and noticed on the side of our patio was a chunk of cement. We decided that the next day we would try to pry that cement piece off of the
ground as it was an eye sore. The next day we woke up and began the process of removing the cement chunk. We had to dig around it in order to get underneath it and try to pry it out. Surprisingly it came out pretty easy. What was attached to it was a different story. Attached to the bottom of the cement was a black looking tarp. That's not supposed to be there. The black tarp continued into the ground...that's not good. So we started digging to see where this black tarp was coming from. We dug...and dug...and dug. As we were digging white plastic was starting to come up with the soil...that's not supposed to be there. The more we dug the more white plastic that came up until we got to the first one.

Laying in front of me was half bag of soil....an unopened bag of soil. I looked at my husband and told him what I found and to come check it out. He laughed and agreed that there was a bag of soil that had just been dumped. We looked at each other and thought the same thing....surely not. We began to dig in a frenzy. Everywhere that our shovels touched there was another unopened bag of soil, the more that we dug out the more bags we found underneath. We finally dug out what had been the Koi Pond and no longer could find any more bags. We counted the bags we had hauled out (mind you these are 20 pound bags of soil). 20, 20 bags of unopened soil had been thrown into the hole and covered up with a thin layer of soil and then topped with grass. Who does that?? My husband and I sat there looking and laughing at the same time, not understanding how a person could just throw the
unopened bag of soil into the hole and be done with it. Once the hole was dug we were able to see that the tarp was at the bottom. The tarp wasn't letting any water get into the soil below, therefore wasn't letting any of the grass grow above. We hauled out the tarp and then continued to find parts and pieces to the fish pond. When it was all said and done we ended up filling in the hole with the bags of soil and plotting new grass. Moral of the story: Don't buy a house with a pond you don't want.