herzausstahl
herzausstahl
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2011
- Messages
- 790
- Reaction score
- 363
- Location
- Northeast Wisconsin Zone 4a/5b
- Hardiness Zone
- 4a
Hi Herz, That looks like a lot of work and not easy with a screaming 3 1/2 year old. I have a stupid question. Why didn't you just bury liner underneath the rocks of the top pool so water doesn't leak out? My whole waterfall is built on top of liner.
LOL, actually Keith she is worse, she isn't the screaming kind, she's the kind who wants to help or throw the rocks in the pond. Usually isn't a problem, just when using the waterfall foam and I don't want her to get it on her hands. If you check back in the thread the liner is connected to the stream liner and goes all the way under, the problem I did is that I made the opening to low in relation to the sides of the pool so I end up with a good half foot of open area above the water line. I always wanted to make the upper pool fuller. It should work, the only downside is that I underestimated how much foam I put under those rocks on the bottom, plus I believe that I used scrap liner under them even though I didn't need too. But that is the one area that I will tear apart if necessary to fix because I want the water level in there to be higher up.
I think Herz does have liner under all of that. The problem is that he wants the water to back up behind the rock, then go over the rocks, but it keeps going under or to the side of the rocks. I had the same problem when I redid my waterfall. Mine was easier, though, since the water fell from one to the next, and most of the water stayed on top to the next rock. But, I like how you're doing this, Herz, very neat idea. The stream I'm building will simply have flat flagstone rocks laying on the bottom of it, and the water will run over them however it pleases. Probably shouldn't have looked at this thread, because now I have other ideas ....
You nailed it Patti. The biggest problem is that it slowly leaks out those two large rocks that the big one sits on. I could live with the rest of the falls slowly leaking because it wouldn't matter when the pump was running (although I would like to retain water in the stream between them if possible), but I do want the upper pool to be fuller. My two biggest problems were being lazy/in a hurry and not removing all the small rocks in the stream bed at each falls site and using the waterfall foam when it was too cold out. But at least it is cheap and I know I can rip it out to start over if need be, but I'll see what happens. For all I know I could rethink the two upper parts once the weather is warm enough to use the foam.
Here is the other project/feature I referenced earlier. It is done except for the pump. I want to get a Laguna Max Flow 600 or 900 to run it, still debating about how much flow I want. Figure it has about 7-8' of 1" tubing to go through and about 18" to 2' in elevation difference so roughly a 3' head to be on the conservative side. The pump will go in the upper pool.
Here is the build process:
I used the blocks to give myself a level higher elevation for the larger rocks in the feature. I also packed the dirt into the gaps and pressed it down. Then I put the geotextile underlay on top followed by the joined liner.
Here I began placing the rocks. I know its hard to see in the photo, but these are too heavy to lift so I rolled them all into place. The second tier one I leveraged up on the blocks and then shimmied over into place, although at one point I did manage to lift it to move it a couple of inches I believe.
I also rolled up the liner edges so any splash would fall into the liner and run down to the pool, although I covered this up later so it really might not do anything. I sealed under all the rocks and in the gaps with waterfall foam (when it was 70 degrees out so it worked like a charm).
Then today I finished the whole thing with plantings. All is in place but the pump:
I added small stones in the middle. In the next pic you can see the tubing running in.
The tubing is buried until it pops out well below the water line in the pool. In winter I will disconnect and remove the pump and possibly try to cap the end of the line or move the end of the line above water and blow it out with a compressor and then cap it.
I didn't like the hose showing so I found a way to wedge some rocks infront of it.
Here is the back of the feature. I put in stepping stones so I (or anyone) can walk around it to the back side of the garden. In fact I will have to update the path to reflect this change now that I think about it.
So once I get the top of the stream opening from the pool situated, settle on a pump and save the $ to buy it I will get this up and running. This will also be the only feature I have to run an extension cord for but considering the low energy usage of the pumps I am considering (the 900 only uses 65 watts and .57 Amps) I'm not worried about it.