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- May 16, 2018
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Hello, this might be a bit wordy, so I apologize in advance. If you don't want background skip to the third paragraph.
First, a little background. We purchased a house two years ago, our first house ever, and it had a small, yet lovely pond in the front entrance (the first picture below). Neither my wife nor I knew anything about ponds, so we followed the previous owners instructions of adding a splash of bleach every so often and refilling it when the water level got low. This however did NOT last long. We went through many bottles of bleach, we tried Curitine Plus, we tried both. We ended up with a giant blue bubble bath most of the time(second picture). Anyways, after doing research we found out the construction of the pond was very poorly planed, if at all. The waterfall "mound" had no proper berm like it is supposed to, nor was there any real skimmer or filtration. In addition the edges of the pond were sloping down into the pond, which of course made it a giant leaf, grass clippings, and landscaping rock collector. The first Spring we had a rebuild the falls as it collapsed due to the round rocks creating the waterfall settling. However, this last Spring the waterfall collapsed even more, and it seems to be effecting the siding of the house, and we are looking to have something less time consuming put in (i.e. something we don't have to muck around in elbows deep every other day and add bleach once a week).
Bubble bath time:
This year's Disaster:
More recently:
So, onto our new project! At first we were going to try to rebuild the existing pond. Try to install a proper waterfall, with a skimmer and everything; but I think we decided this was not going to be feasible for the space (as you can tell from the photos we don't have much room to work with behind the falls to build much of a berm. Then we wanted a pondless waterfall with more of a stream, but when we talked with several pond people in the area, this again seemed doable but not the best for the situation.
So we finally settled on a pondless bubbling something-or-other (still deciding between basalts and a natural boulder). What are your opinions? We have found a nearby supplier that sells bubbling boulders; our favorite is attached (it looks like a limestone, or holey boulder) as the last two pictures, but it weights a little over 1,000 lbs, which means getting over the pavement will be very tricky. Any thoughts as to if this is doable? The people we've gotten quotes from haven't given us an exact weight limit, but I don't think they think we are out shopping around for rocks. The same place did has a set of three basalts but we were a little under whelmed, maybe it was because they weren't set up? There were the Easy Pro set of 20", 27" and 35" I believe.
Side view:
Do you have any recommendations for brands of pumps? Most people we have been getting quotes for installations seem open to us selecting what brand, they suggest a 3,000 gph, is that a good size? Also do you have any recommendations for lighting? We saw Easy pro has some lights for inside of the stones. We previously had lights, so we do have two transformers, not sure what size. Is Easy Pro a good brand? Our previous pond had color changing lights (which my wife loved), but the only brand we found was Atlantic. Is that a good brand? They didn't seem to have any lights for inside of the fountain. Does anyone have any other good suggestions for color changing lights? We would light spot lights I think and lights for inside of the fountain. Would it complicate things to put different brand lights on the same transformer using a splitter? Speaking of splitters, is there a rule of thumb for the maximum of how many lights can go on one transformer?
We live in southern MN and were told that since it is a pondless system we could leave it running year round, is this true? We would be afraid that something would freeze. We previously used a De-icer on our old pond even though we didn't have any fish (just because thats what the previous owner told us to do in the Winter, and he left it with the pond).
Thank you in advance for any and all advice!! We have talked to many local pond people, and sometimes it seems like we get told the exact opposite things.
- Hopefully soon to be pondLESS water feature owner
First, a little background. We purchased a house two years ago, our first house ever, and it had a small, yet lovely pond in the front entrance (the first picture below). Neither my wife nor I knew anything about ponds, so we followed the previous owners instructions of adding a splash of bleach every so often and refilling it when the water level got low. This however did NOT last long. We went through many bottles of bleach, we tried Curitine Plus, we tried both. We ended up with a giant blue bubble bath most of the time(second picture). Anyways, after doing research we found out the construction of the pond was very poorly planed, if at all. The waterfall "mound" had no proper berm like it is supposed to, nor was there any real skimmer or filtration. In addition the edges of the pond were sloping down into the pond, which of course made it a giant leaf, grass clippings, and landscaping rock collector. The first Spring we had a rebuild the falls as it collapsed due to the round rocks creating the waterfall settling. However, this last Spring the waterfall collapsed even more, and it seems to be effecting the siding of the house, and we are looking to have something less time consuming put in (i.e. something we don't have to muck around in elbows deep every other day and add bleach once a week).
Bubble bath time:
This year's Disaster:
More recently:
So, onto our new project! At first we were going to try to rebuild the existing pond. Try to install a proper waterfall, with a skimmer and everything; but I think we decided this was not going to be feasible for the space (as you can tell from the photos we don't have much room to work with behind the falls to build much of a berm. Then we wanted a pondless waterfall with more of a stream, but when we talked with several pond people in the area, this again seemed doable but not the best for the situation.
So we finally settled on a pondless bubbling something-or-other (still deciding between basalts and a natural boulder). What are your opinions? We have found a nearby supplier that sells bubbling boulders; our favorite is attached (it looks like a limestone, or holey boulder) as the last two pictures, but it weights a little over 1,000 lbs, which means getting over the pavement will be very tricky. Any thoughts as to if this is doable? The people we've gotten quotes from haven't given us an exact weight limit, but I don't think they think we are out shopping around for rocks. The same place did has a set of three basalts but we were a little under whelmed, maybe it was because they weren't set up? There were the Easy Pro set of 20", 27" and 35" I believe.
Side view:
Do you have any recommendations for brands of pumps? Most people we have been getting quotes for installations seem open to us selecting what brand, they suggest a 3,000 gph, is that a good size? Also do you have any recommendations for lighting? We saw Easy pro has some lights for inside of the stones. We previously had lights, so we do have two transformers, not sure what size. Is Easy Pro a good brand? Our previous pond had color changing lights (which my wife loved), but the only brand we found was Atlantic. Is that a good brand? They didn't seem to have any lights for inside of the fountain. Does anyone have any other good suggestions for color changing lights? We would light spot lights I think and lights for inside of the fountain. Would it complicate things to put different brand lights on the same transformer using a splitter? Speaking of splitters, is there a rule of thumb for the maximum of how many lights can go on one transformer?
We live in southern MN and were told that since it is a pondless system we could leave it running year round, is this true? We would be afraid that something would freeze. We previously used a De-icer on our old pond even though we didn't have any fish (just because thats what the previous owner told us to do in the Winter, and he left it with the pond).
Thank you in advance for any and all advice!! We have talked to many local pond people, and sometimes it seems like we get told the exact opposite things.
- Hopefully soon to be pondLESS water feature owner
