The Water Feature (or Creeping Featurism)

Last year Suzanne and I looked at adding a waterfall to our backyard landscaping.  We had the perfect spot, with sloping ground in the corner just past our block wall.  We visited a “waterfalls, fountains, and ponds” store in town and were inspired by a display in the store showing how to construct a waterfall, along with the attractive finished result.

We were convinced we could “do it yourself”, took pictures of the display (which included some instructions), and purchased a pump, liner, and various supplies.

Photo above is from the store display showing how to build the waterfall.

This photo shows the store display finished product.

We visited a rock yard for more materials to supplement what we already had.  We dug out the pools and path, laid down the liner, and placed a few strategic rocks on the slope.

Sadly, things didn’t work so well.  The most flagrant problems were getting the flat stones level and channeling the water over the stones, instead of under and around.  We got discouraged and distracted with other summer activities.  The partially completed waterfall sat there all this summer as well.

Here is a photo of our neglected waterfall project.

However, we had a stretch of marvelous weather in October and I felt motivated to finish up a few yard projects, including the waterfall.  I visited the store again and got a few more ideas for how to address our problems, bought some mortar and foam spray, and went to work.  I thought this might be a half day project to finish it up.

Boy, was I ever wrong. The half day turned into two days, then a week.  The project became a money and time pit, with repeated trips back to Home Depot and various rock yards.  Just when I thought I had it pretty much finished, and just as the stretch of nice weather ended after a couple of weeks, I discovered I had a leak somewhere.  Over several hours of running the pump the water level in the lower pond dropped to the pump level.  Was I ever discouraged.

I was confident I knew where the leak was, so I applied more mortar and foam spray in the suspected area.  Ran the pump–still leaked.  Arghh!

Finally, on a cold, damp November 4 day I dismantled a section of the rocks and determined exactly where the leak was.  I reformed the liner and surrounding rocks, and planned to run it a few hours to confirm it was tight.  But when I restarted the pump the electric circuit popped and smoke billowed from the outlet.  And it was just starting to rain and get dark.

But I was not going to surrender and wallow in my discouragement.  I made another trip to Home Depot for parts and proceeded to troubleshoot the electrical problem.  I determined the pump still worked via a different outlet.  But I wasn’t getting any voltage to the switch from the house that fed the outside line.  I dismantled and reseated the wires into the connections–no luck.  Eventually, I determined that the outdoor circuit was being fed by the GFI outlet from our bathroom (of all places!), and it had tripped.  Once we reset that I got juice back at the outlet.  (Good thing I wasn’t shocked previously when I thought I had disconnected the appropriate breaker, but hadn’t.)  So, I got everything put back together in the dark and rain, and began the water leak test.  Ran it overnight and…voila!  We have a waterfall!