We have a "Hole"... the rest... we need Help!

[sissy]

I have seen that with cave homes and was not sure about rocks above ground .I can not imagine having to design a whole pond around rocks and hills so for me it is a head scratcher for sure .Gosh can't imagine having to haul water either .Though back a couple of years ago I watched a show dream builders and these people built on there grandfathers land up the side of a mountain in Colorado and they had all rock and no way to get water and built an indoor room for a cistern and had to pay once a month to have water truck deliver them water .It was HGTV .Gosh you never know it works you laugh and say i beat the odds it fails you try to rethink it .Will be interesting to see it happen and sure do hope it works .I know about dreams and what life can throw your way .I told my daddy i was going to retire before 50 and I did it a couples before 50 and that was 9 years ago .Dream a dream and you will forever be young .

 

[addy1]

Love the look of what you are doing.

I run my stream on a separate pump from my pond, it does drawn the pond down and adds water once it shuts off. But I like having it separate, two reasons, one safer, i.e. if something clogs the stream I (hopefully) will catch the big pond dropping in water level before it drains it dry. Two, the size of pump we would need to handle the head pressure was expensive and a power hog. We are using a clear water pump from harbor freight, $39.00 it handles a head pressure of 115 feet, we need around 75-80 feet with our slope. (maybe more may be less, have never done a hard measurement) We do run our stream on a timer, again what we prefer. But we get a good flow down our stream, the plants are happy, the deck pond gets a good water flush, keeps the stream ponds fresh.

It works for our set up.

 

[DaveandKris]

I have seen that with cave homes and was not sure about rocks above ground .I can not imagine having to design a whole pond around rocks and hills so for me it is a head scratcher for sure .Gosh can't imagine having to haul water either .Though back a couple of years ago I watched a show dream builders and these people built on there grandfathers land up the side of a mountain in Colorado and they had all rock and no way to get water and built an indoor room for a cistern and had to pay once a month to have water truck deliver them water .It was HGTV .Gosh you never know it works you laugh and say i beat the odds it fails you try to rethink it .Will be interesting to see it happen and sure do hope it works .I know about dreams and what life can throw your way .I told my daddy i was going to retire before 50 and I did it a couples before 50 and that was 9 years ago .Dream a dream and you will forever be young .

That HGTV house is about 10 miles away as the crow flies. We were building and going through the same challenges about the same time. Building on a rock.... what a challenge! I fenced about 20 acres into 3 different pastures, normally just a grinty job but doable. Here... every single hole but 4 requires drilling a 1.5" hole, 12 inches deep into solid granite and then the T post beat into that hole. Drill a hole, plant a post, pick up the generator and jack hammer and carry it to the next post location. Never before had I longed for "Dirt" so much as when fencing here. By the time I got to the one area that had 'dirt', I was able to sink a T post in One slam... we near held a party in the pasture!

Hauling water is a whole different way of life, something that in time you get used to but... It sure changes your thinking about conservation, you dont leave a faucet run for no reason.

The "thinking part", that is the most difficult for me. Once I ordered the sealers and commited to a direction this AM, then I am no longer worried about what happens. Worst case is I drain it down if/when a failure occurs and we rubber line it or I buy a drum of truck bed liner and give it a spray down. The fingers will stay crossed and we will hope for the best.

 

[sissy]

wow really do the people still own it ,how neat .I guess we love rocks but rocks we can handle .I have dug up enough rock here since building to make a large water holding ditch filled with rock .I hand dug it down 4 feet and then filled it with layers and layers of rock and water goes in there and filters out to the lawn to keep it green around that area .

 

[DaveandKris]

wow really do the people still own it ,how neat .I guess we love rocks but rocks we can handle .I have dug up enough rock here since building to make a large water holding ditch filled with rock .I hand dug it down 4 feet and then filled it with layers and layers of rock and water goes in there and filters out to the lawn to keep it green around that area .

I dont know the people so I am not sure they still own it. Based on my experience of building on a rock... any mariage that can survive that experience is a solid one for years to come! I threw in an extra twist and convinced Kris that seeing as it would only be a few months until it was completed... why dont we live in a nice little 5th wheel camper on the property so we could watch it being built. Some 16 months later we moved in.... oppps.

 

[sissy]

I was the GC on my house and stayed here until the house was set and then had to go back to NJ to go back to work and then had to come back down to bring my son down so he could start school and he lived here while the flooring and rest was done ,he had one room to live in .My house is a modular and the first one norris homes built in there new factory and the first one they ever built that was 100 ft long and it took 2 cranes and a front end loader to set it .I filmed the whole thing and it took almost 12 hours to set it because of the roof and getting it tied down to the anchors in the basement .The house has 2 sets of steel beams under it and 2 steel beams and a glue lam beam in the attic to make the attic open so if there was any reason to go up or down with living space I could .I was in a rush as I sold my house in NJ the first week it was on the market and the people never even came to look at it . Gave me over asking price as there were 4 offers on the table .I prepared myself ahead and got a home inspection my self .What could they find everything was new in the house within the last 4 years .I even paid for a full year of heat and air service contract as an incentive .It took norris homes 2 months to build my house and they gave me a great deal if they were allowed to do filming from beginning to end of a high end modular .I really won .I did not want stick built on sight as it is subject to weather conditions wet dry heat and cold .In a factory they control that .Plus i did not have the luxuary of time .I designed my floor plan also which norris homes bought the rights too .

 

[DaveandKris]

Last evening we applied two coats of the first step of cement sealer. The first coat went on with paint brushes, inch by inch, working it into the pores of the shotcrete. The second coat was applied with a garden sprayer to get a uniform coat over the entire surface. This evening, after 24 hours dry time, it gets the second step, two coat application..... and then 'it' is done and sealed.... I Hope!

In the middle of one of the worst dry spells in the States history.... I power washed the concrete some 4 times over the last week or two. Days away from application of the sealer we get the worst Gully Washer storm we have seen in the 7 years we have owned this property. Living on the side of a Rock.... run off is one of my intended fill techniques for this pond. Snow melt, gentle spring rains, a quick thunderstorm in the summer (nothing stays overhead here for more than a few minutes, everything is fast moving), a nice trickle to keep it topped is the plan. THIS storm, this one had the 3 foot culvert where our driveway bridges a gully, FULL, with the water threatening to back up and overflow the drive! The gentle trickle planned to top up the pond...... Three more days of power washing to remove the hillside debris from the nice clean cement I had prepped and ready for sealer.

Lessons learned: Some sort of a separation basin is required to filter out the debris from the run off intended for the pond. I had the bottom drain screen removed so I could machine up a flange to make a multi point, low level filter inlet. It is now known that a Pine Cone makes an excellent 'stopper plug' for a 2" bottom drain... knowledge is power I guess.

Knowing that there will be sediment in the bottom low point drain area of the pond, my intent is to come vertically from the pond floor, 'T' to a smaller sized pipe leading to the shallow side, 'T' again directly above that for a main pond low level inlet (with a gate valve to control flow in), and then up to the top for a fabricated floating skimmer.... design yet to be determined. Due to the nature of what sure will be a changing water level, I need to make this telescopic to adapt to those changes. Minds Eye designing techniques, I couldn't come up with a 'hose' that would be flexible enough to allow for the varying water levels, and still not collapse under the suction of the intake, telescopic is the only idea I have come up with so far. As that pick up would now be rigid in a horizontal plane, now I have to come up with a trap door in the deck overhang to be able to easily clean out the skimmer intake as it would be mounted directly under that. Oh Joy, design changes to the deck once again........
At least I can see water hitting this "Hole" in the coming week! Doesn't matter to me if its clear, moving or with a waterfall and stream..... just so long as the Hole is filled with Something! The rest will be a "work in progress" and turn back into a Labor of Love. At this stage.... I thought a Boat was the biggest black hole in the water to throw money into..... a fool I am..... the "Hole" itself that floats the boat is a far bigger drain! Sure would have been more cost effective if we had "dirt" where a hole could have been dug... building an above ground hole on the side of a hill is an eye opener... what was I thinking?!

 

[sissy]

Mother nature does hat she does and when she wants too .We had a couple of bad storms since i have been here and amazed at the damage she can cause .Thats why it is good to have a storm like that before you get to far ,this way you know what and where you will need to fix or solve a problem .Better now than later .

 

[addy1]

The year I built mine, we had 17 inches of rain coming down per hour (luckily is did not rain at that rate for an hour) That is when I found the problems with our slope build. Put in a few gravel pits, shallow, a few french drains, so far no more water run off issues.

 

[DaveandKris]

The year I built mine, we had 17 inches of rain coming down per hour (luckily is did not rain at that rate for an hour) That is when I found the problems with our slope build. Put in a few gravel pits, shallow, a few french drains, so far no more water run off issues.

... and you have some pretty steep slope by what I remember of the pictures I saw! Our slope is mild for about 1/3 miles but ALL rock over that distance and then it heads up steep another 9000 feet vertical. You idea about the gravel is great, I will start shoveling this PM... that should sort out the big chunks just fine

Just finished the final coat of the sealer and we have all of the rough plumbing for the drain/filter done.

Tomorrow AM we see if this hole holds water

 

[DaveandKris]

"Tomorrow AM we see if this hole holds water"......... The short answer was No.

Multiple leaks in every area from the main pond, shallow pond and upper holding pond. I am sure there are more but I only put about 3500 gallons in and then took time to play. Kris had the air mattress out and the dogs splashed around before I had to drain all of that and start researching pool plaster.

Before the draining occured I was able to fine tune my filter pick ups and test flow those. I didnt get the water level high enough to test the auto height adjusting skimmer I built but with and old trash pump I was able to see how the filter pick ups actually finctioned and was able to approximate the pump size required for this. Another advantage of a partial fill was the ability to test flow rates for the stream and falls sections. I tried various pumps I had around already and ended up picking up the Lowe's 5K pump. The 5K pump does a very nice job of supplying both the falls and the stream together with a 5 ft height head and 27 ft of 2" hose. At 1 amp draw, this pump is effecient enough I have no problem leaving it running all the time... my thanks to Addy and Sissy for talking me through that and forcing me to look outside the box. Lowe's doesnt offer an extended warranty on this unit but at an on sale price of $200... if it happens to last 3-4 years it could be considered a throw away stepping stone for that matter.

Running the 5K pump allowed me to check the design of the upper holding pond and the flow rates of splitting the stream and the falls was accomplished easily by the placement of a few rocks on the stream side. We (I use that word as if I myself had any say in the "decorating" portion of this project) will be able to adjust sound levels between a 'babbling brooke' to a 'raging stream' with the inverse happening on the 'falls side'... I think this will work out fine.

As this is all built on a hillside and I was able to make a gravity feed bottom drain filter pick up, I have decided to run one of the (8) 5x10 craigslist solar panels I picked up for near nothing, in parellel on the filter side of the plumbing to assure it wont freeze in the winter. Hidden out of view under the gazebo I have all the room one could want for and a perfect southern exposure for this. As we have many shirt sleeve days in the winter here and 335 days of sun... why not, it wont cost anything to heat it that way, might help keep the bio filter 'alive' as well. Considering I have 40 bags of pool plaster coming Wed. in an attempt to find and plug the bottom of the money sucking black hole, any effort to assure no cracking is a justified one. Its just part of the cost to make a pool where there is no dirt to dig a hole in, it is what it is.

As expected, the wildlife had less reservations about the pool only partially filled than we did. It looked like scenes from a wildlife documentary where spring floods come to the desert. Flocks of Goldfinches, Siskens and Grossbeaks, two broods of wild Turkey, 16 in all, Bobcats followed those, deer.... make a water hole in the high desert and nature will find it! Care and caution was taken to remove the frogs that found their way into this within a day or two. A gaggle of little lizards/gekko's... what ever they are, found the concrete walls and the rocks leaning up against those to make them look natural, a Perfect new home. Between those and the Goldfish we should have insect management taken care of I suspect. It was quite impressive and I suspect it will get even better this coming weekend when it finally gets filled.... for the last time..... I hope!

 

[addy1]

That is so neat about the wildlife! I just love all the critters it has brought to our backyard, nothing like you are seeing. The gold finches just love to drink from the stream and cracks me up to watch them eat string algae like it is spaghetti. They grab a piece and draw it right up. The few stream ponds that are real small and shallow, always have a small amount, once I saw the birds eating it I have left it in them.

Good luck with your plaster job! got fingers crossed you stop the leaks.

 

[sissy]

Gosh it must have been a sight to see and hope it works out for you and hope you can post some pics too .We love nature pics .

 

[j.w]

Oh sorry it didn't hold the water but I'm sure you will figure it out and get it right. That is so cool that the critters came and visited it while full of water.
They will be on the sidelines waiting and rooting you on just like we will :banana:
You gotta show us pix when you get it all up and running and when critters come again :razz:

 

[DaveandKris]

We are very fortunate with having all the critters near but until this point they have just been passing through on the way to the stream. What we consider a joy to watch, others consider dinner so..... it will be interesting to follow what happens. As quick as we could count, there were mid 20's of Gold and Red Finches playing in the stream section at one time and the word had just got out. In this case all we did was move the source of action from the stream banks to our pond area. Given all the critters have a far better line of sight from this pond, I suspect the survival rate for a drink will greatly increase over that of the stream down the road a bit. I have tracked the Cougar every snow fall for 6 years just to get a look at them. I suspect, as they walk the fence line 6 feet from the pond, we will get that oppertunity soon. We will see what happens and hope those in the upper food chain only requires a drink once in a while.

Today I found 275 gallon, steel caged water tanks with a raised bottom and bottom drains for $75 ea so I picked up a pair for the filters. Just finished machining PVC slip fittings for the filter pick up pipes to go in the bottom drain.

If effort is any indication of our chances of this working.... we should be in good shape.

Any suggestions where to get a good deal on filter media to fill these big tubs?