Thanks for all the nice comments. I sure hope Nancy's passed them on to Frank.
A few updates to report:
1. We thought that the Cetus Pond Sieve had been manufactured with double wall construction, but in actuality the lower portion is single wall -- and it's
very flexible. I mention this because (after we finished packing around it with sand and finishing the cement, stone and mortar work) we noticed that the float seemed to be pinched a bit as it no longer travelled up and down in the channel freely (as opposed to how it had functioned before). So we had to bust it all out and build a vault to keep it from deforming under the pressure then finish it, again.
2. Both of the air nipples coming out of the gunite (for the DIY air domes) were damaged during the previous work and had to be repaired -- which required the pond to be drained about 75%.
3. While we were at it, we lowered and balanced the two no niche skimmer units.
4. And finally, we patched some cracks from earth movement (where we'd shot the 'new' gunite pond underneath some 'old' waterfalls from our prior watergarden) using A&B epoxy putty.
As you can see, the koi couldn't have seemed to care less.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.