Newbie to a water feature and it's issues

[brokensword]

Well....considering I am a newbie I did only put the liner just over the edges of the hole section. It'll do for now ND is certainly better than it was.

put the liner all the way to the top and you'll solve all your water loss problems. Just covering the 'hole', and esp with tape, will give you frustration as you'll be refilling all the time not to mention, probably kill your pump when it goes dry.


And, you won't be a newbie for long!!

 

[Dimelius]

View attachment 146480
Here is the bottom (or lack thereof) of the pond basin. I installed a liner and used black flex tape to adhere it to the basin.

Use it like a preformed and put in from bottom to the edge, then hide liner with these flat stones and cut the excess. Pond made!

 

[addy1]

Well....considering I am a newbie I did only put the liner just over the edges of the hole section. It'll do for now ND is certainly better than it was.

I would redo, put that liner all the way up to the edge of the preform ie the top edge. It probably will not hold water with the taping, well unless you are extremely lucky.

Welcome to the forum!

 

[GBBUDD]

WOW ... um ..... yikes.... Preformed plastic like all plastics leach oils meaning good luck getting much to stick for very long. All your v hard work .. like as mentioned cut your losses and start over. You'll be putting bandaids on that set up for years and always pulling it appart. one thing you maybe able to get away with is to cut out he preformed . dig out the bottom and make the exact same preformed fit inside the same opening but that two has a very good chance of being a nightmare and failing. after much hard work. You did a very nice job with the mortar and obviously took great pride in your work. My best suggestion to you would be to install a liner inside the entire preform all one piece across the bottom and up the sides. Bring it up over the top and secure it to the top with tap cons. these are concrete screws where you'll need a masons drill bit to drill the concrete. DO NOT cover the entire top only what you need to to secure the liner. Then place a new layer of rock inside the pond coming up over the sides and up to the now top and then run all the rock across the top covering it all and you have both rock and mortar on the edge and toward the center spanning liner. in the picture new ro is new rock
The red line is new liner that has a layer of mortar and rock over the liner . up over the top and tap cons into the mortar joints

 

[CometKeith]

View attachment 146480
Here is the bottom (or lack thereof) of the pond basin. I installed a liner and used black flex tape to adhere it to the basin.

I like your design and how you put your rocks together. Without beating a dead horse to death the standard method is to always bring your liner out either under the rocks or into them otherwise you will get a ton of leakage and water loss. Also something you might not be a familiar with is “ floating liner syndrome” . That’s when water gets under your liner and it starts to float up. Not a lot of fun to deal with

 

[nofears67]

Wow thanks for all the replies everyone! Excellent information and thoughts! I will rethink the liner...lines..., these pictures show the old pump cord that was fed behind the preform pond and under the mortared rock...I tht I would be able to just "pull" this old cord out once I disconnected at the power switch...we'll, no....it seems this cord was "joined" to the 3 wires running in a couple dust to the pond area somewhere behind the pond basin and under the rock. I can't pull the cord out to replace it . Now I guess I have to remove some of the rockwork to get into the area where the old pump cord in joined or junctioned to the other wiring...this is SO ridiculous that someone did it this way...wow

 

[brokensword]

View attachment 146608View attachment 146609
Wow thanks for all the replies everyone! Excellent information and thoughts! I will rethink the liner...lines..., these pictures show the old pump cord that was fed behind the preform pond and under the mortared rock...I tht I would be able to just "pull" this old cord out once I disconnected at the power switch...we'll, no....it seems this cord was "joined" to the 3 wires running in a couple dust to the pond area somewhere behind the pond basin and under the rock. I can't pull the cord out to replace it . Now I guess I have to remove some of the rockwork to get into the area where the old pump cord in joined or junctioned to the other wiring...this is SO ridiculous that someone did it this way...wow

why bother? Lots of work probably not needed. I'd just lay in a new cord and find a way to camofluage it, esp since you might want to mess with it again. You could just lay rock over it. You might have to drill/cut a hole from the outside through to the existing one, but even then, you could go up and over and use camo again. Depends on what you want the final product to look like, but I've never been fond of burying anything I may need to service, and you know you will.

Just as an example; you could run the cord on the outside of the rockwork then up and over. To hide, you can put a trailing plant at that 'over the top' junction and voila! instantly hidden. And if you put a few more along the way, it would naturalize. For the outside the rock wire, you can put a branch to cover, or more rock. Really not hard and material would be easy to find.

Just an idea or two.

 

[nofears67]

Boy you are right brokensword...that would be a lot of work and I was not really wanting to remove rock. So after pondering this more I've decided to attack it from the inside and will remove an 8 x 8 section of the preform pond wall so I can get behind and into where the old pump wire is running to figure out what's going on. Then once that is resolved I will put the piece back and patch the area. This all sits under a ledge and will not be seen when pond is filled and operating.