Too much water!

[Elarson5757]

I recently had a new pond and waterfall installed and all has gone great so far. Last night we had a very heavy rain and the water came up 2+ inches. As a result the skimmer is below the water line and the debris is not getting drawn off the pond. Do I just wait for evaporation to bring it back down or is it normal to use a pump to bring it back down?

Also it appears that the waterfall is creating a small amount of surface foam after the rain. Normal?

 

[addy1]

Mine overfills quite often after rain, I just let it equalize by itself, I don't worry if the skimmer is not drawing for a bit. Yes you can get foam after a good rain fall, various stuff can get washed into the water, dust dirt pollen.

Welcome to our forum!

 

[Lisak1]

You should make allowances for overflow - either a low spot where the water can safely drain or an actual drain.

 

[j.w]

@Elarson5757

 

[poconojoe]

This doesn't make sense. You want your pond to be full.
If your pond is full and your skimmer is underwater, doesn't that mean your skimmer is mounted too low?
When the water is at the level of the skimmer, is your liner exposed above that point?
If your skimmer is cut into your liner, I guess it has to stay that way.
If it doesn't naturally drain off to meet the skimmer, you may have to create a low point or a drain-off pipe to keep the water at skimmer level.

 

[Lisak1]

Good catch @poconojoe - it does sound like the skimmer was set too low. Any "overfill" should resolve pretty quickly.

 

[poconojoe]

Yeah, I'm just wondering...when the water is at the proper skimmer level, how does the pond look? What I mean is, does the pond look as though it's not full? Is the liner exposed all around? Or are there stones and such in place to hide the liner? If so, no big deal. Just creat a low point somewhere to keep it at skimmer level.

Maybe some pictures would help us guide you better. Plus we like pictures anyway!

 

[Jimmy Gibson]

Depends on your pond.... sometimes you put the skimmer where you want the water level to be

 

[poconojoe]

Depends on your pond.... sometimes you put the skimmer where you want the water level to be View attachment 124572View attachment 124573

Yep, it depends. Yours looks great! What is that tan exposed part? Stone or some type of liner?

But if there was an exposed black epdm liner it might not look so good.

 

[Jimmy Gibson]

Yep, it depends. Yours looks great! What is that tan exposed part? Stone or some type of liner?

But if there was an exposed black epdm liner it might not look so good.

It’s Rock on a Roll..... not the best/natural look but better than the wrinkled 45 mil edpm. When you put rectangular edpm in a round hole you are going to have wrinkles, so the ROR is about the only option on a vertical surface short of doing stone masonry

 

[Jimmy Gibson]

Actually it looks better now that it has some age and stuff growing on it, even above the water level a form of moss grows on it

 

[poconojoe]

That looks really great! I had a feeling it was something like that.

 

[Jhn]

My pond will fill up above the weir to my skimmer box, before it overflows through the rock edge. The edge of my pond has rock extending under the water a good 10” or more on a shelf, so the water in my pond can change as much as a foot and you wouldn’t see the liner.

As was mentioned you may want to set a low edge so the water will only fill so high. I don’t really worry about as I don’t get that much floating debris in the pond, and the skimmer will still pull the floating debris I do get over to it even when the weir is underwater.

 

[Elarson5757]

The pond can come up about 1.5 inches and be over the weir on the skimmer. At about 2.5 inches it would overflow the rubber liner on a low side and level itself. It's surrounded by rock with zero liner exposed. The rock sticks up on the sides quite a bit higher than the liner.

 

[poconojoe]

Very nice!
And if the water level lowers, only rock can be seen. That shelf with the rocks on it does a great job of hiding your liner.