As of right now my husband and I have a waterfall but it is made of wood and at the very top we inserted a big rubbermaid container to hold the water. When the tub fills up it over flows onto the rocks creating a waterfall into our pond.The tub at the top is full of Lava Rock as a filter, and a small bag of pea pebbles. It has worked great for 4 years. But now it is wanting to overflow and leak. And it doesn't look as natural as we would like it to. We have several different kinds of rocks. Some that are med, some xtra- large that came from stone mountain, (which ofcourse is granite). And some that are the
flat rock, which are gorgrous too, but, I'm not sure if we have enough of the flat slate rock to just completely make the waterfall only out the flat rock.
My ? is how do I build these rocks up and seal between them to keep the water from running away and out of the pond, and not over the rock formations that we plan to build as the major waterfalls?
Thanks, Traci S
This message was edited Mar 26, 2005 5:21 PM
Help to build a great non-leaking watefall!
Tracy, make sure that the sides are high enough and somewhat level all the way around. The water will only be as high as the lowest point of your waterfall basin. Sometimes water wicks out from folds in your liner and it's a big pain in the butt to find and to fix.
Waterfalls are not easy IMHO. It took us two months to figure out how to connect our bog to our pond, make the water go over the top of a spillway and to make everything water tight .
Of course you have to have liner under the whole waterfall but you also have to be able to connect it to your pond withour water wicking out where the WF and pond connect. And it will wick out.
I've seen where people build a rock structure mortaring it together with cement and then using a sealer.
You can keep the water where you want it by having a long enough piece of liner to pull in up and create folds to keep it from staying completely under all of your rocks.
Example: Say you have a pile of flat rocks stacked up for your water fall. The water will flow "over" one side and fall of off the other. On the back side where the water flows over, you need to pull up the liner to create a barrier. That barrier will keep the level of the water raised so that it can spill over the stack of rocks and into the pond. You should have extra liner for it to completely cover the back of your stack of rocks and fold over a few inches over top of your fall. Put a final rock on top to hold the fold of liner in place and seal the seam between rock and liner with great stuff. You can get it in black from pond supply stores or just use the yellow and paint it to blend with you rocks.
I hope this makes some sense to you. It's so hard for me to explain and I never could find any step by step with photo's on the internet to make it easier. I'm not sure exactly what kind of waterfall you would like but if you'd like, I can try to draw a picture of how I control the water flow over my spillway and keep it leakproof.
Thank you so much!! And yes I see how it is very hard to explain. I don't want you to go to too much trouble, but I'm gonna look on th internet and see what I can come up with. And if I still don't get it, I would love to have a drawing like you are talking about.
Thanks Branka,
Traci
Oh yes, please branka! ....Donna...craning her neck to see over Traci's shoulder...
I will try (I can't draw) to illustate it later, I need to get off my butt now and get ready for company.
I always use lots of mortar to place my rocks and you probably do this but a liner under the rocks is a must. Then I spread lots of mortar and place my rocks on it while it is wet. Use the mortar in between the rocks. The way to get the water to flow over rocks instead of under is to use the spray insulation that squirts out of a can. Stick the nozzle in the cracks and squirt it in until it expands and fills the space. It dries quickly and in an hour or so you can bring on the water. Unfortunately it is bright yellow but pond suppliers make some for ponds that is black. Be careful this stuff though. Wear gloves and if you wear glasses protect them with goggles. If it gets on eyeglass lens they are ruined. I know this from experience. lol