Help me design a waterfall for this pond

Wow! I LOVE your waterfall. Gives me ideas...........

Gorgeous!

Check any party supply store, around New Year's especially, and you should be able to find plastic champagne glasses, the flat/wide kind... not quite the same thing as a real martini glass, but pretty close!

So, do you share that pool with fish, or is it strictly a "people pool?"

lol! Target has those plastic martini glasses .....different colored ones too :o)

I think our Dollar Store might have had them last summer, too...

Lovely waterfall TexasLizzy! Enjoy those martinis ;-).

Thanks for the compliments.

No fish as of now. Just people. We do chlorinate it for people use. When we have BBQ's (we ARE in TX of course) it si perfect size for the neighbor kids.

We were concerned aobut using a liner in our clay soil esp. the way tree roots seek H2O. Thus we dug it out (should I say I dug it - DH doesn't know how to use a tool without a trigger on it) then tied rebar, installed plumbing and poured concrete 6" on base and 4" walls. The pond is 42" deep and overall is 12 X 18'. Flagged hte top and built the waterfall. The actual water fall faces away from the house and faces the pergola. I wanted to create a sense of wonder to force people off the back patio and into the garden spaces I was designing. This project took us 2 attempts and a year of construction (only weekends when we were home from work) to complete. Only real cost to us was the concrete, plumbing and stone. We did all the labor.

When we complete the real pool we will put fish in it (obviously we will not be using chlorine at that point) along iwth plants - original goal.

I was curious, because I thought I'd heard of people using bio filters in lieu of chlorine... the effectiveness of that probably varies with climate, use, etc. It's really stunning, and I like the idea of a waterfall that can be heard from the deck, but to see it you have to walk down to the garden. Sweet!

since we use it for people and use the chlorine, the bio filter is off. when we convert to fish, we will turn it on.

By on and off, we plumbed in a valve system to pass the water to the biofilter or bypass. Currently the valve is is in bypass mode. When there are fish and no chlorine, we will turn it back on.

BTW, one mistake we made and will have to correct is that we did not include a skimmer. BIG BIG BIG (oh did I say BIG) mistake. We added a vacuum return after the fact and will hook up a skimmer this summer.

It requres that we remove a top flag stone by the vacuum return, cut the concrete beam on top, fit a skimmer box, seal around box and replace the top flag. I have to clean daily with net daily with live oak leaf fall and bradford pear flower drop.

any suggestions on how to keep the water in the water fall from seeping backwards into the bed?

I put a liner underneath all the flagstone incorporated into the water fall, also put pebbles and sloped everything forward...but somewhere I am still loosing water (about 2 inches per day)
I am assuming that the water is coming off the rocks and seeping back into the flower beds....or other possibility is that it is evaporating off the rocks before it gets to the lower pond?

thinking of trying to put pond liner directly from the upper level lip that will go directly into water at lower pond.... just wondering if anyone else has a better idea...before I go moving all those stones again! LOL!

Here is a close-up

I when you put that liner down, be sure no water gets underneath it. If it is really windy you will lose lots of water due to evaporation.

Hey TexasLizzy! How's the seeds going for you? My plants are doing awesome!!! :)

I would stick your finger down in the soil around your rocks, if it feels really wet then you know you're getting leakage somewhere, otherwise it could definitely be evaporation. I have a small pond and when the weather's warm I need to top it off pretty regularly. But 2 inches a day when the weather's not that hot yet seems a bit much. The other possibility if you're not losing it at the waterfall is that you've managed to poke a hole somewhere in the liner...unfortunately those can be tricky to find sometimes.

its not the liner (thankfully!) I have one of those hard plastic inserts for the upper and lower level. at first I was worried that I poked a hole or cracked the lower pond insert with all my flagstone moving...but I shut the pump off for a few days refilled the lower pond and havent lost anymore water. so it must have something to do with my design! lol! It hasnt been really windy, it was rather warm last weekend but not summer weather... so I can only assume that I am somehow loosing water in the waterfall part. Hard to tell where its going cause everything was pretty wet before I even turned the pump on.
I may just wait a few days for everything to dry out, then turn the waterfall back on and see if I can tell where all that water is going....

We will go days without the pump on and not see any water loss, then boom the pump is on and we lose 1/2-2" per deay depending on wind/sun. It doesn't evem seem to take that much wind for evaporation. With the water falling off the rocks, the evaporation goes much quicker!

Tammy, seeds are doing great! thanks again. I am glad you plants are thriving. Be careful of the lamium. I have made two trades with it, cut off two sections for a hanging container and STILL it is huge, all from one plant last year.

Liz

Liz, so glad to hear it! :) That Lamium must be one fast grower in your neck o the woods! :)