#Thegreatpoolpondconversion - 200405
We keep reminding everyone we’re amateurs. Who’ve had a fair bit of luck. And we’re guessing at a lot of this.
We had hoped to be showing pictures of some great rock work today. But it was not to be.
We went out Saturday to seal the spillway into place permanently.
Should take 20 minutes, right?
Then we could run a full flow and leak test Sunday and move on.
Through a series of unfortunate events, we spent 3 hours out there.
Well one unfortunate event. When we barely lifted the spillway rock, that beautiful face wall of support rocks fell over. Yeah, it’s obvious why.
It wasn’t a whole lot of time lost and could easily have been rebuilt.
What it did was cause us to reevaluate how we would build this wall securely and successfully. And then integrate the rest of the walls and border. And some other things too.
So after the initial shock, we tossed around a bunch of ideas and we hit a winner.
So one step forward and five back. And then a bunch of better steps forward.
First, we realized the tank was too tall.
To wall rock the thing in all around, it would end up looking like, well a large pile of rocks.
And since the front rock wall would need to be thicker, there was no way the waterfall would land on water.
It would inevitably land on rock.
While there’s nothing wrong with that design, and we’d be aces at it, we want water more or less gently landing on water.
We set up another flow test in the grass using the solar and the pump to be accurate. We decided to cut the tank down to half the height.
Then we realized a biggie. Instead of supporting the spillway on two piles of rock - one inside the tub and the other being the face wall, we could counterweight the rock on one pile hidden inside the tub and that could get it a few more precious inches out over the pond. And all of a sudden, the front wall has no support function. It’s completely decorative.
Since the spillway now is a few more inches over the water, we were able to inch the whole tank back from the edge just a bit so when we do rebuild the front wall, it can start and rest on the deck and not 12 inches down on the first shelf of the pond. This is a huge construction headache gone.
Now the front wall doesn’t have to be built separate and first and used for support. It can be built after the spillway is in and we get the waterworks working. Then it’s just a visual design project.
So we went ahead and cut the tank down, started to cut another spillway recess and tested the fit.
We played around with the orientation of the tank versus the pond and the spillway versus the tank and found the sweet spots.
And forgot to take a picture.
We were tired because it was 3 hours, this wasn’t our Saturday plan and we needed to rest for Sunday.
When we walked away we knew it really clicked.
With all the experience of the last few weeks we were able to re-do each step a bit better this time.
On Sunday we laid a base of pea gravel on the deck and put the tank on it. Now it’s level, secure, uniformly supported, and won’t settle.
We trimmed and trimmed carefully and finished cutting a much better fitting recess that’s gonna look a lot better when done.
We played around with securing the liner and got it to be a tighter, better fit..
In anticipation of rocking in the entire tank next week, we washed a bunch of slate and jack rock. Here’s a pile:
(Rock is not lighter than sand. It’s just shaped differently, so there was advil all around after we quit).
We’re much happier and we know this is ‘right’. It’s a better design. Easier to implement. Will look better and be sturdier.
The tank/pool is now shorter and off center. The spillway will extend out farther and will not be supported under the outer end (hint hint). It’ll look much more interesting from every angle with each view more asymmetrical and different from the others - more ‘natural’.
So the initial falling wall has turned into a cantilevered Falling Water.
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