Aquascape's "NEW" How To Build a Pondless® Waterfall

good morning I'm ed velu with aquascape I'm here to show you today how easy it is to install a pondless waterfall using our medium pilus waterfall kit let's go over here and talk a little bit about our design as you can see we have our patio and seating area over here in front of us we're going to be starting this reservoir out right here next to the main seating area the waterfall is going to start approximately 10 feet back somewhere over in this area we want to make sure that we hit all the different viewpoints from inside as well as outside the home water is going to simply recirculate itself throughout the system it's going to be very simple easy to take care of and it's going to just fill this entire space with the wonderful sound of falling water once we've laid out the design the first step is to actually lay out the reservoir itself so what we're going to do is we're going to take the actual aqua block panels we're going to lay them out in the appropriate location where we want our reservoir and then we're going to simply spray paint around the area to do the excavation we're going to go approximately 4 inches around the outside perimeter of the blocks so this is going to be the location of our reservoir right in the middle of this is going to be our pomace fault itself so this is going to be sitting right in this section our plumbing is going to come right out in the back it's going to go over into our berm it's going to go into our waterfall spillway which is going to recirculate the water right back into this reservoir before we got here today you can tell obviously where we're our excavation everything is going but we did have all of our utilities marked before we started we're using the small aqua box today the small aqua blocks are only digging down 18 inches approximately so we're really not going that deep one of the important steps is to keep all the dirt on site and we're building a waterfall the key thing with the waterfall is you create a nice big berm make it look like it comes out of a hillside the biggest mistake people will make with building waterfalls is the dirt will go down left and right really abruptly making this look more like a volcano than a natural look at waterfall so keep the dirt on site we want all of our edges around the perimeter of this Basin to be at about 90 degrees we want this bottom nice and flat and level so when I put these aqua boxes and they sits flat you don't want them sitting on any humps where these blocks are leaning towards the center or off to the sides we put them on a flat bottom surface here it makes them stronger and more solid they'll actually support more weight that weighs the other thing you want to think about is your diggin conditions if you're running into a lot of rock and gravel you might want to come and bring a couple extra yards of sand out here sand will do two things it will give the liner a nice cushion to sit on the other thing it will do is to make it really easy to level this bottom off our excavation is complete it only took us about an hour for three of us today now what we're going to do is we're going to finish building our aqua box we're going to place these down here on the bottom so we can make sure everything fit now the vault is the same width as one of the Aqua bottoms as you can see this little part that extends out of the front we call it the foot this has to be excavated down so this is flush with the soil so it's going to be nice and smooth going across the top the reason we do that is the pump is going to sit down at the lowest portion inside of the reservoir giving us access to all the stored water within the system our problem is Volta set a couple things that you want to remember is make sure that it's level side to side as well as front to back before you put everything in place what I mentioned before about having the aqua box rest on this ledge this is an important piece as well as you can see the Aqua block is going to go right across and it sits directly on that foot piece this is going to allow all the water access down into our pumps once everything is positioned as everything is looking good right now we'll pull everything out we're going to put in our geotextile our liner put the aqua box back in place and then we're ready for our backfill now that the liner spread out on the bottom we're ready for our aqua box to go in this particular kit comes with one layer of the underlayment fabric and then the rubber liner it is an option to bring in a second piece of the underlayment fabric we always put it in it's basically it's cheap insurance it's going to help increase the the protective value of that liner once this is all in place we'll take our aqua box put everything in place and then we're going to do our back flowing process so our aqua box are all set now we're going to start back filling it's very important to backfill from opposing sides we want to come in with a nice loose material so we're using a nice loose pulverized topsoil this will allow water to drain and move through it freely another option if you have it on site would be sand sand works just as easy and and sometimes often better depending on what you're digging conditions are so what we're doing is we're placing in some these cobblestones in here we started out with a couple bigger pieces now we're just filling in around it with some smaller ones and then we're going to come across the top of that with some river rock let's see the type of river rock we're using here it's a rat it's a bigger piece inch and a half to three inch as you can tell when you look at the aqua box it's big enough where it's not going to fall down inside of there you want to stay away from pea gravel and smaller rocks because they can get wedged up inside of the aqua box themselves we have a simple adapter to use that when we're hooking up our pump to the plumbing so this is going to adapt to our two-inch piping system so that makes our adapter so now we could screw this right on top of our aqua surge pump we've got to grab our pump down we're going to simply place it down into the waterfall vault the discharge is going to be lined up perfectly with our with our hole in the back and our plumbing line is going to come right up here up to the top of our waterfall we just made a simple transition down from the surrounding grade coming in nice and smooth into our vault bring our plumbing line in and we'll get our PVC glue to glue that up our stream bed excavation has been completed as you can see we kind of carved this whole area out leveling off the bottom for our water to flow from the top of the berm down into the reservoir our waterfall is going to be crashing down right in between this section it's going to be working its way in between these two big boulders that we placed earlier we're going to line this whole section with the EPDM liner we're going to cover it all up with a mixture of granite and moss rock now that we have a stream bed liner in place we're going to do a simple overlap going down into our reservoir there's no need to make a seam in this application and it's because we have an elevation change as you can see here we have approximately six to eight inches of elevation change from the from the stream bed to the top of our reservoir so what we're going to do is we have the bottom liner coming up underneath we're going to simply take this liner and overlap it down inside so we're well into our stream construction here we've got a couple racks set usually we start waterfalls and streams we always start at the waterfall area the key thing is come up with a frame rack over here call these are frame rocks the frame rock really determines where the water is going to spill from so we got our frame rack here and then our spill stone I like to set this one first then set the spill stone then come in with another frame rack the fewest racks you can use or the fewer racks you can use when building a waterfall the more natural it's going to look when you start stacking a lot of little rocks on top of each other it always looks man-made we have our final position set for a waterfall spillway what we did was excavated the area out behind our waterfall stones we compacted that soil so we don't have any settling issues we laid the liner in place then we cover it up with a fine layer of the of stone it's only about two inches thick but what it does it allows us to level everything off and it allows any drainage or any any water that's going to come out of the spillway not to get behind the liner so what we want to do place the spillway in place appropriate elevation so it's going to come in we want to try to hide that lip with our waterfall rocks we have to make sure that this unit is leveled off so we're just going to check it real quick for our level everything looks good we're level side to side we also want to have it leaning slightly forward about a quarter of a bubble forward just to aid in that water flow coming out of the spillway our spillway is set now what we want to do is we want to take off our tightening nut the rubber gasket and we're going to take the rubber liner we're going to bring it up behind the unit want to make sure that there's a little slack behind here because you don't want to put tension on it so I'm just going to pull that down make sure there's a little slack in the back take my fingers here and I'm just going to make kind of an outline then what I'll do once I get that done and fold this liner back you can see just a really faint outline over on this side take a good sharp razor knife then I'm going to slice that out I'm just finishing up my cut from my through the liner I'm going to pull the liner forward I'm just going to place it right over the over the hole use our rubber washer that's going to give us a good solid seal over here on the back we're going to come back in with the big tightening nut on the back basically just want to go hand tight initially just snug everything up and take a big pair of channellocks here tighten it up just a little past that final piece we're going to hook up our NPT fitting here in the back take a little bit of our silicone that comes in our installation kit in the same philosophy I want to go hand tight first and then after that we'll do it with the wrench doesn't need to be real tight we have that silicone in there and it's going to seal itself up really nice we're all ready to set up our PVC pipe we've already cut it to the proper length we're going to use our PVC glue remember when you press it in press it and hold it because it can ride itself back out so you want to hold it for a few seconds once everything is in position next up just going to simply be backfilling we're going to take our soil start coming in back over the piping then we'll finish off our berm we'll bring in a couple more wheel barrels of soil place in some more character stones around the back for our retaining as necessary and we're in good shape our waterfalls are set all three of them the bottom one middle and our waterfall spillway now it's time to do our foaming we're going to use our foam gun and I'm going to take it behind the waterfall rocks right at the joint where the rubber liner comes up directly behind the waterfall Rock I'm going to put some foam in there and it's going to expand and it's going to seal up that gap in between there alright guys our gravel is coming in but one of the things we want to do before all the gravel goes down is put in our underwater lights the main reason we like to do that because I like to set the light run the cable and then just bury the cable with the gravel it's a nice time-saving trick with a waterfall like this I've got more of a sheet of water I'm going to come down there's two different options I can take this light tuck it back behind the sheet of water shining up and it creates a really neat glowing chamber type look we have another light called a bullet spotlight the bullet spotlights are better from distances coming back at the waterfall the advantage to that is you light up a little bit more space creating a different effect now that our waterfall in-stream is running is really the best time to start doing your edges the worst thing you can do is finish all your edges first turn this on and not see where things are leaking now that I can see exactly where my water level is my stream I know exactly how high I need to get my liner here so what I'm doing here is I'm just going to take this liner fold it down and then back dirt right up to it go ahead I love leaving a little extra liner just in case later something settles I've got a little bit more liner there to play with I can always come back pull it up and pack dirt underneath key with edges is mix it up a little bit some areas we want to bring dirt right to the edge but we don't want to do that all the way around other areas we want to do gravel right up to the edge mix it up a little bit in a look a little bit more natural with a professional aquascape pondless waterfall kit and a proven step-by-step process you can transform any landscape into an aquatic paradise thanks for joining us we'll see you next time

Channel: AquascapePonds

Views: 1,245,068

Rating: 4.7872014 out of 5

Keywords: Aquascape, watergarden, ponds, waterfallshowto, how to, watergardening, water gardens, ecosystem ponds, waterscapes, aquascapes, pond, outdoor living, outdoor living space, landscape, landscaping, water features, diy, stream, fountainscape, fountains, water garden lifestyle, decorative fountains, gardening, pondless, pondless waterfall, pond construction, waterfall construction, stream construction, aqua10, aqua05, aqua03

Id: Ty0acUVBzYE

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 26 2012