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Saving the Wrong Way |
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Wrong: Trying to Invent Something New
Often enough we see how a pond builder wants to 'try out a new idea' at any cost. Such spirit of invention is usually caused by insufficient overview of existing literature. Don't make a guinea pig out of yourself! Millions of ponds have been built over the past decades. NaturaGart has followed this development for nearly 30 years. It is impossible to gather so much experience by building just one pond. You should rather profit from our experience!
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Wrong: Where Cheap is Not Cool
CD player broken after 3 years - no problem! By now we have DVDs with much more capacity and they are cheaper than repairing the old CD player.
This are different with ponds! Changing a broken liner always means days of mud fighting. Our oldest liners have been in the ground for more than 20 years now. The first PCs were a novelty and CDs hadn't even been invented yet.
That is only possible with quality... |
 To replace a broken liner means a complete new start: mud out, plants out, decoration out. This mud fight can go on for days and is also a problem for anything that lives in the pond. |
Wrong: Build a Smaller Pond
Example: Instead of 300 Euros you invest 600 Euros in your pond (i.e. 100% more). The surface area of water grows by more than 300%!
The reason: Depth is always necessary - independently of size! Also the requirements for shore reinforcement hardly depends on size. This becomes even clearer when looking at the total costs of the pond (including plants, Fleece900 and shore mat).
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 Once the required depth is reached, every square metre on the ground also means (nearly) another square metre surface of water. The larger the pond gets, the less expensive each additional square metre. The chart to the right shows it clearly: Pond #1 costs 40.00 Euros per square metre, Pond #5 just 15.00 Euros. |
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This is how liner gets cheaper:
No data
In the worst of cases it just says "pond liner" without any extra information about elasticity, resistance to cold, and so on.
Useless data:
"Pond liner according to DIN" or "100% UV-resistant" is useless.
Filler Materials:
PVC is 600% more expensive than soot. It is easy to technically replace more than half the PVC with it. The PVC itself becomes a mere adhesive. Cheap plasticisers finish the liner off completely.
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Dropping Below Minimum Measurements
Quite often liner is sold as 1mm thick when it really only is 0.8mm thick. That saves 20% raw materials. Regulations allow for additional 10% strength tolerance.
DIN-Fraud
Saying that the toughness of a liner has been tested according to DIN something-or-other says very little. Often the given number only determines the testing method, for example how the liner is fixed for the test. What its real toughness is, is given by a completely different DIN-number.
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Reclaimed Material:
In extremely cheap liners 50 and up to 100% reclaimed materials of undefined quality is used. That alone halves the raw material price.
Plasticiser:
The amount of plasticiser determines flexibility, the chemical composition determines durability. Costs can be reduces easily by 20-30%.
Colour:
Good pigments cost ten times as much as the filler soot.
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Zero Service
When you have a problem you need competent advice. If a liner vendor puts his grandmother on the phone this is surely cheaper, but it won't really help you...
In our ponds department normally more than 10 dedicated engineers, biologists and technicians work in customer service. Strict cost control keeps the cost at minimum level. If our customers didn't need our staff all the time, they wouldn't be there. You, too, will need them...
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Little Perspective
There are competitors in the market with very aggressively priced products. Some of them have suffered multiple bankruptcies, taking up business again under a different name.
With insolvency they also do away with the promised long term warranties given on low quality materials.
No doubt: It is always possible to manufacture products to lesser standards, making them cheaper. The problem is that you cannot really afford to buy so cheaply when purchasing a pond liner.
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Good Perspective
NaturaGart exists since 1979.
With our quality standards we have managed to become market leaders for the larger DIY ponds. Because our good name is at stake, we do not sell low quality liner. If you have a reduced budget, you should decide for NaturaGart Black. It is quite a bit cheaper than other NaturaGart liners, yet still much better than the extremely aggressively priced liners. |
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