Table of Contents

• Overview
• Materials
• Background
• The Renovation
  • Excavation
  • Duck Pool
    • Stock Tank
    • Pool Framing
    • Drainage
  • Gravel
  • Sand & Finished 🎉
  • What’s Next?

Overview

Our duck run was a smelly and muddy mess… A haven for fly breeding and duck muck lovers, it needed a renovation! 😅

We also used this opportunity to replace our blue kiddie pool with a framed and drained stock tank! Going into winter, we knew that we wanted to de-ice the pool and that kiddie pool wouldn’t handle the warmer.

🦆 The ducks enjoying their new pool:

Materials

For our 8x8 run, it took:

• 24 bags of sand as a top covering
  • Note: don’t use play sand, use coarse sand.
• 28 bags of gravel as a drainage layer.
• 2 ground contact 2x6x8s for the pool frame
• A screw-style basket strainer sink drain
• 1.5” PVC pipes

Background

We have an 8x8 poultry run for our ducks. We bought it last year when we started, plopped it down, and the ducks quickly made it into a bog. It began to smell, it seemed to never dry out, and the ducks would dig holes everywhere with their bills, especially around the pool.

It was a mess and we knew we needed to fix it!

The Renovation

Excavation

We were targeting 1.5” of gravel for drainage and about 2.5” of sand for the ground covering, so we dug down 4” and leveled that out. It was incredible to see what amounted to about an inch of “muck scum” that sat on top of the dirt as we dug in. 🤢

Once we got that done, we started working on the stock tank.

Duck Pool

Stock Tank

We purchased a 50-gallon Stock Tank from Tractor Supply as our kiddie pool upgrade. We weren’t confident of the exact volume of the kiddie pool, but we expected that we’d be able to fit 4+ ducks comfortably in this new tank at a time, so we pulled the trigger on that. We went back and forth on a 70 or 100 gallon tank. However, the larger tanks only expand the depth, and we wanted to make entering and exiting accessible for the ducks, so we thought we went with the low-profile 50-gallon tank.

Pool Framing

We decided to frame in our pool and backfill it with 4” of gravel. That way when they splash, it’ll drain directly. Additionally, in the past, our ducks dug in the dirt around the pool between drinks from it, leaving holes around it that filled with water, also making the pool water muddy. We anticipated that they’d do the same with the sand, so investing in the frame felt worth it.

The framing was just two ground-contact 2x6x8s that we cut at 58” and 38”, a good balance of width and length for the splash zone. We secured it with 3” deck screws and dropped it right on the excavated floor.

Drainage

I’d previously built a drainage pipe connected to a sink strainer drain for our kiddie pool as something of a “proof of concept”; we knew that the kiddie pool was always going to be a temporary solution. Fortunately, the drainage pipe and fitting were intact, enabling us to re-purpose it. However, we did adapt our drain unit specifically!

We’d previously used a spring style sink strainer, but after frequent uses, the spring mechanism in the strainer bent constantly, making it difficult to replace the strainer after cleaning the pool. This time, we chose a screw style strainer, and so far, it’s made a notable improvement!

Therefore, I highly recommend the screw-style strainers if you’re going to do something similar.

Due to the pool frame, though, we needed to bore a hole though the frame. We used a 3” round drill bit. Honestly, this was the hardest part! 😅 However, cutting from both sides was enough to punch it through. It gave our 1.5” drain pipe generous space.

Gravel

After finishing the pool, we dropped the remaining gravel within the run. We ended up adding 6 more bags of gravel than we’d originally planned for, as we felt we’d otherwise regret skimping on the drainage layer.

Sand & Finished 🎉

Last but not least, the ground covering: sand! 🏜️ We used 24 bags of sand, each being .5 cu ft and 60 lbs.

Aside from the weight, this was easy: drop, cut, and dump the bag!

And here’s the finished product (from that evening):

What’s Next?

To ensure the stock tank doesn’t ice over, I ordered a 50-gallon capacity de-icer and will install it once the outdoor electrical box arrives. This will keep the stock pool free of ice over our lake-side Michigan winters!