Pacific Ponds & Design

Great service Hal showed up on time got the job done prices seem a little high though it is a speciality service so I don’t really know… all in all Hal got everything working the way that it should and it looks great and highly recommend him.

charged and estimate fee for starters. we paid over $ 1,000.00 to have him find the leak (s) and repair them. I wont get into Hals arrogance as that doesn’t really matter because he stopped returning calls. Turns out, his acid wash and power wash created more problems than I had to start with. He kept trying to tell me it was my pipes, cha ching, more fees. Anyway, once I found Koi Shui, I was able to get my pond fixed. These guys were about 1 5^th the cost and kept coming back until they repaired everything. Hal came highly repaired by Sunland Pond, Later found out his wife owns that business.
Now, in all fairness, this was a repair. I have no idea how his work is from ground up. Perhaps, he returns calls and keeps to his schedule when there in larger amounts of money on the table. Best of Luck if you choose him.

We love our new pond. Hal is wonderful to work with and gave us multiple options and price points for our vision. He really worked with us to get everything we dreamed of for our new pond. My husband sketched what we envisioned and it came out spot on in less then a week. They really took the time to pick each rock and placement and you can see the care and attention in the final product. The entire team is wonderful. George is the hardest worker ever. Aldo is incredible and makes any thing beautiful. Hal is professional and friendly and addressed every request and did it all within our budget. I couldn’t be more thrilled with how beautiful it turned out and how caring and attentive they were to our requests and needs. Highly recommended.

My wife and I are had to move our current pond to a new location on the property. We Called Hal because we buy a ton of our fish, plants and equipment from Sunland Water Gardens. So we figured Pacific Pond and Design would be just as good. Our assumptions were right! Hal and his crew worked hard and did a great job. Aldo and George are very polite, knowledgeable and creative. The experience great.

Just had a pond created by Pacific Ponds & Design and I was very pleased by the results.
The owner, Hal, was responsive. The crew was very punctual and clean. The price was also fair for the work.
Overall, it was a pleasant experience dealing with the company and the work actually exceeded my expectations.
Based on the results, I feel very comfortable recommending them.

We hired Pacific Ponds & Design to build us a pond. Hal, the owner, asked for $ 1,000 deposit. We paid the money but his company never showed up to perform the work. Hal would not return our many calls. After three weeks he offered to return our deposit — but a week has since gone by and we still have not received a refund. Hal spoke of his great crew of employees yet the CSLB website shows that Pacific Ponds & Design does not carry workers compensation insurance.

I have a large waterfall in my backyard that my husband designed and built as a birthday gift for me a few years ago. It was his pride and joy and sadly, he passed away last year and a few months later the waterfall got a leak. I was in a panic. I reached out to the company that my husband had consulted with and they came out to the house five times charging me over $ 1,200 and never fixed it. I declined their proposal for me to spend $ 4,000 to have the waterfall lining replaced I called Pacific Ponds & Design and Hal was very responsive, very thorough in his questions and even texted me while on vacation in Mexico to schedule a time for a member of his team, Aldo, to come check my waterfall. Today Aldo arrived on time, quickly assessed the issues and walked me through every step of the repair. He understood my emotional connection to the waterfall and took great care to keep the integrity of the design as he made the repairs. Four hours later my waterfall is running beautifully! I could not be happier! THANK YOU!

We had a large pond that leaked and couldn’t maintain a deep enough water level to support fish and keep out the raccoons. We decided to fix it and make it deeper. We talked to three companies and got estimates. Hal was by far the most knowledgeable and had a solid vision of exactly what to do to to fix the pond. Although he was not the cheapest estimate, we felt he best understood our vision and needs. He patiently worked with us as we were uncertain as to the water feature we wanted to install. In the end, we decided on a fountain that he had recommended all along. The pond ended us being exactly what we envisioned. Hal did great work at a fair price and I would recommend him to anyone considering building or fixing a pond.

I highly recommend Pacific Ponds & Design to build you a gorgeous pond, the right way. Building a pond is a significant investment and a complex matter. You, therefore want to carefully select someone who knows what they’re doing, technically and aesthetically, and takes the time to determine what YOU want, not what THEY are comfortable doing. Hal, the owner, quickly dialed into what I envisioned, without a lot of salesmanship, at a reasonable price. He’s honest, dependable and promptly responded to my email questions.
Our pond blends in naturally with our yard, is made mostly with the large rock & boulders from our yard, without the liner showing! I was impressed how skillfully his crew chief arranged the pieces to achieve an artistic, balanced and natural appearance. Hal followed up a week later to fine tune the waterfall for more impact. A surprising bonus — it’s dazzling at night when it’s lit up.
I first learned about Pacific Ponds from the people at Sunland Water Gardens, where you can see examples of Hal’s work. But, before going with him, I thoroughly researched everything, interviewed and received bids from about 6 pond & landscaper people. I visited première Koi ponds/​waterfalls in our area like LA Co Arboretum, Huntington Library, Maratha HS (former site of Ambassador College). I chose Hal because of his extensive experience, knowledge and being up on the latest equipment and pond theories. I also believe you will get more personalized service from a family business as opposed to the big outfits around here that purport to do everything for your yard.
I suggest choosing someone like Hal who is devoted to and specializes in building ponds, not someone who does driveways, sprinklers, plants, etc, but will try to convince you to sign a contract. Check out his nice work at Sunland Water Gardens, check out his website, which happened to have a photo of what I wanted.

My wife and I had been maintaining a pond that was there when we bought the house in 2001. After several years of replacing fish due to lack of depth in the pond (eaten by raccoons) and trying to rework it we had finally given up and decided that we wouldn’t have any fish. A colleague was moving and asked us if we would take their fish. Long story short we attempted to get the pond ready but in the process caused a leak that I was unable to repair properly. We had already talked to another contractor that was offering a pond remodel that was 2 – 3 times the price of reworking the one we had and said the pool was going to be no maintenance. Since the whole situation was unplanned and all we really wanted was a repair or a simple remodel making it deeper and a little larger we decided to call Hal at Pacific Ponds since we had visited Sun land Water Gardens earlier. Hal came in and assessed the situation and gave us two reasonable estimates for repairs or the remodel. We decided to go with the remodel. Hal’s crew came in and in 4 – 5 days had completely reworked the pond making it deeper and wider and made the spillway more decorative. Everyone on the crew was great and we are super happy we went this route. I believe Hal is fair and reasonable about his approach building and remodeling ponds.

The short story is Hal from Pacific Pond & Design charged me $ 100 to check out my pond and said that money would go toward future work. He then stopped returning my calls. It’s been over two weeks so I had to start over. The next two pond companies I called gave FREE in-​person estimates so my advice is to call Koi Shui Aquatics or Pacific Design & Aquarium (similar name, don’t get confused!) first since at least you won’t lose money.
To be fair, here’s the long story so you can judge for yourself. We recently bought a house that came with a turtle pond that was filthy and the water level was dropping fast. Sunland Water Gardens referred me to Hal from Pacific Ponds & Design. He came over to check out the pond for which he charges $ 100. He said that money would go toward future work like cleaning or repairs. He was «nice enough» but kind of condescending, repeatedly calling the pond primitive in a tone that did not make me feel good as a new homeowner. I explained that I moved from NYC and knew absolutely nothing about ponds. Even though this was a paid visit, Hal kind of made me feel like he was humoring me by answering my questions. I also expressed concern for the turtles’ well-​being (there are three). He said not to worry about the turtles and that the pond needed to be cleaned but I had to do some tests first to identify the leak. The two points are for the tests which ended up being somewhat helpful.
Over the next two weeks I did two tests and got back to him with the results. The second test caused the water level to drop a lot more and I was really anxious about the turtles. I called him on a Monday at 9am and left a message saying that I did the second test and was ready to proceed. No response so I called on Tuesday at 4:30pm and he picked up and quickly said he couldn’t work on my pond this week, and ended the sentence, like that’s that. I said that’s fine but can we make an appointment for the future when you are free. He said he couldn’t tell me but strongly assured me he would call back that night or the next day at the latest. The next day was Weds, no call. On Thursday I sent a text, no response. Friday morning, I definitely wouldn’t have left such a strongly worded message if not for my turtle anxiety, but at the same time, I’m pretty shy and not a crazy client, what feels out there for me is usually nothing for most people. I calmly said, I was expecting to hear from you on Wednesday and at this point I’d love to hire another company but you already have my $ 100 so if you just don’t want to work on my pond you should refund it or else please let me know what is going on. I guess that was too out there, it’s been two weeks and he never called back.
I then got in touch with two other pond companies. The similarly named Pacific Pond & Aquarium Service and Koi Shui Aquatics both came over and gave FREE in-​person estimates and had great attitudes. Dennis from Pacific Pond & Aquarium showed me I could just refill the pond with a garden hose so the turtles had more water while I waited for service. I had assumed the water needed to be treated or added in some fancy way. I thought I had made it clear to Hal that I knew nothing about ponds and also that the low water level for the turtles was why I was so anxious to proceed so I can’t understand why he didn’t just tell me to refill it after the test while waiting for him to have availability. I ended up going with Koi Shui Aquatics (they are great, see my review) because they located the leak but first had me do one more test to rule out the smaller reservoir for leaks which as far as I know Hal was not going to have me do. I would simply recommend first going with a company that gives free estimates (like Koi Shui), so on the off chance Hal doesn’t want to deal with you, you won’t be out $ 100.

Fantastic experience and incredible results! From concept design to finished pond and waterfalls, complete with lighting, Hal and Aldo were a joy to work with. Highly recommend these guys as they provided us with a backyard centerpiece that completely transformed our yard. Use these guys, you won’t be disappointed.

Husband and I were looking to add a pond to the backyard to finish our landscaping. Hal was excellent to work with, and we talked through options that worked for our budget. As soon as we decided to go for it, Hal had his crew onsite immediately. Aldo was creative, detailed and thorough. The pond was completed in only 4 days! We are completely happy and ecstatic with their work. Already receiving tons of complements from friends and family who have seen it. Hal and Aldo really exceeded all our expectations.