Win a Nexus 10 Tablet - Tell us your greatest backyard win!

I don't have backyard win right now, but I am working on it. So let me tell you what I am gonna do.

I love animals, especially reptiles and fishes, so I decide to build a pond in my backyard. But having a pond implies too much work because you need filter the water, maintain the water warm, change the water every week, feed the turtles, or in a few words check than everything is ok from anywhere using the internet.

Thinking a little bit I figured out that I can automate almost everything necessary to have a healthy pond  with turtles and fishes. So I am planning to use a Raspberry Pi connected to the internet, the Raspberry will control all the pond system like the filter, the heater, a ph sensor, some electro valves and pumps to replace the water and refill the water when necessary, water level sensor, opacity sensor (to check how clear is the water), a camera to watch the pond remotely, and a fish/ turtle feeder.

Here is the schematic of I want to make:

And here is the space where I am going to build the pond:

And I hope to obtain something like this:

And hope you enjoy my future backyard win, my turtles will be so happy

And when I finish, I will have a BBQ on my DIY wheel griller

Best regards,

Daniel.

I know where im going for my fall vacation very nice

Should've had that during all the work

Definitely NOT as the work never gets finished....same as the beers on a working bee  ... AFTER its finished.

Funny how some things you lose seem to find you, and others are gone forever.

Nice to look back on all the hard work.

We also took pictures at regular intervals to see the changes over the 10 years.

Now when we show them people can't believe the change from an empty paddock, to what it is now.

Mark

My biggest Backyard Win is the backyard itself!

We cleared the lot and built the house, leaving what was pretty much a gravel pit as a yard. We then got something like 30-40 dump trucks full of "free fill" to level things up a bit. This is what that looked like, aka "before"...

After we rented a machine to level it all out, raked for several days, added maybe 15 dump trucks of topsoil, and raked some (a lot) more it looked like this...

And as it all came together and the grass had some time to grow it finally started to look civilized:

The fence was also a very painful part of that, and I lost 10 pounds building it (don't worry, I've since found them back )

All in all, the landscaping took us pretty much 3 years straight, nearly every weekend and after work hours spent doing what we now look back on as "Extreme Gardening". The only breaks we got were when it snowed for a few days here and there

Oh and we did also build a deck as part of the whole thing. My wife had a beautiful design she wanted so I used some Home Depot software to draw it out and viola! - rejected by the building inspectors! So I had figure out how to build a deck to code - turns out San Diego has that info available online, and it's pretty much the same as our Canadian rules. Lots of beams, lots of huge concrete footings. Now if there's an earthquake, under the deck will be the safest place to hide

Worth the effort though:

We later added a hottub. Should've had that during all the work to soothe our aching muscles!

ps, when I say "we" I mean just my wife and myself for pretty much all of it. The only exceptions are that her dad ran the backhoe to level the rough piles of dirt, and we hired a friend with a small digger to dig the ponds and river.

Cheers,

-Nico

the largest piranha I ever saw

The only one I want to see.

You're right these types are lifestyle are not in existance for a very large proportion of the population.

I guess we lived in the best years after all.

Mark