Build Your Own WATERFALL: Pro Tips Revealed

ah awesome day rocks are on time everybody's here it's almost too good to be true just never ever lose everything what are we doing today but I am upon this waterfall and a little unique because the slope is moving away from the house and something you know we always do is kind of designed to be visible from the house so let me show you how we're gonna solve that problem [Music] at all let's do it this guy right here if we take this big in that sphere about here and I don't want to put it too close this is a great window jump but if I put it too close you'll lose the sight line from the deck over there so I want to get that about right here if I can get that here there maybe feel see something from their front porch which is a pretty epic front porch and I left there scream and it's Winston turn down and give us a great-looking waterfall the reservoir goes here we're doing nine box which will give us just about 300 gallons of water of course we're gonna seek it down a little bit lower gives us more height for the waterfalls I want to pull it off of the driveway a little bit to leave some room for landscaping yup this area I really want to focus with the waterfalls coming as close to the stairs as possible yep you don't want it to follow the stairs all the way if we don't leave room for plants and the whole thing fails so in certain areas that will come in contact with the stairs that move away as aesthetically fails instead of he fails whoa that's every dip dip dip yep okay because this yard actually slopes more this way and we need to go that way all of this is gonna have to get built up yeah so we'll take that dirt put it here the dirt that's in the back of the truck and then anything else we can generate for your property love it boom [Music] so we're totally on schedule Oh holes dug one thing we're doing now is thinking forward and digging out what's going to be more of the shape of the reservoir not the actual size of the reservoir let me show you that I'm talking about with that this was the footprint of the aqwal blocks right here of course I don't want our finished product to look like a rectangle the real estate I have from this area here to here by the time I start putting some of these massive rocks over here in that space it'll get really small so we kind of think of the shape if water we're coming down there maybe it's swinging out a little bit over here then coming back Chris is working on digging the pump vaults right now but of course we want to put a rock right in front of that to help hide that space we'll probably get a rock out here to look at how much dirt we've generated to build all of this up over in this space so that gives us that nice high elevation to get that sphere up a little bit higher we'll have to speckle in some big boulders into here to retain some of that it also allows us to now get that waterfall to come this way which is what we want we want it visible as they drive up this long driveway and see it there I also think there's something psychological about stairs and often people will just sit on their front stairs or sit on a stoop before you've been sitting on a bench or something so we really want that waterfall visible from the stairs as they walk up towards the house our next step is for Chris and I to kind of come up with a landscape plan they've asked if while we're out here if we couldn't throw in a couple plants for them so we're gonna see if we can't get that all to happen by the end of the day tomorrow tune in for more stuff [Music] all right liners in pole is roughly shaped we even have our first waterfall kind of dug out there looks like they've got it twisted a little so we're pulling the whole thing out and what we'll probably end up doing because we want to twist and turn this stream quite a bit is actually cutting it right over here we're Matt's at that'll allow us to do an overlap and get a little bit more twist and turn with this stream Nick's jumping down in the hole pull this liner down towards us get another sheet of fabric over the top of this before we put in our nine large aqua box so moving right along after that we start back filling and we start setting some boulders [Music] hey guys just wait a second so I just realized that we're getting gold over here and our viewers out there would really love to know what did you just tell him be the water okay it's e-explain up so we're filming this stuff you have to think about where the water is gonna go we're gonna have a really cool waterfall here we've blocked it off on this side and we wanted to come around off of this stone over here right now there's a huge hole here huge hole here and that if I can get my hand underneath the rock obviously water can get underneath that too so we want to take that foam gun get it underneath all of this stuff fill this in get underneath this rock here and then if you can right where the liner starts dipping down I need to foam from here all the way in through here yep and then over this we've got this huge cavity I just put foam over this I'd have to foam all of this all the way back in through here it would be easier just to take foam over this area back to where the gravel meets the liner here and then I put a piece of fabric over the top of it I can come back in here pull some of this out and then do the Bibb liner be the water go [Laughter] [Music] we're making huge huge progress out here on this Thomas waterfall whoo yeah one two basically three waterfalls built the next one is gonna go up top behind and then the spear all waterfalls are kind of built the same or like we have our style and all of ours are built the same waters you wrote it away the earth leaving back behind the stones that couldn't move so we have a hillside like this ideas carved into that hillside right don't try to build up when you don't need to we have a nice slope to work with so we wanted to work with that we came in here and we dug out a flat run notice though that the height of this is lower than my spill stone there you're talking about these rocks right here which water will travel over yeah so here though they don't come around this little guy and they don't come together right in here okay I intentionally wanted to do that so as water comes over this yep it looks like it's eroded this out if this were shallow up in here mmm the water would come pick dry gravel basically yep push all that gravel all over the place because it still wants to enjoy it away everything and liner would be exposed all the time it'll look a whole lot better to drop this down let that water swell up a little bit before it goes over the other one you know I mean that was one of the first things that you teach when building waterfalls is dig almost back pitch the pooling area that the waterfall dumps into because that's what you would see in nature right I got this back in here - yep this allows us we always dig our waterfalls back on these big like you curves this allows me to put whatever I want to back in here to hide that rubber liner so I could put little cobbles I could take a big piece of granite back you could even put a piece of slate back here and nobody would know it because it's so far back in there then there's a big sheet of water come see the water cover in it big rock on one side big rock on the other side something in between so here is big rock big rock between between you say they're all built the same but to create the different movement why don't you talk about that the angles to which you're facing the waterfalls right so you're not it's not like a staircase low because I think that's a really common thing that maybe our viewers have you've got a hill like this but you don't want to do is have like often I'll get a homeowner that says well can we get the water to kind of go like this and then come back like this well there was a hill like this in nature what it would never say I'm gonna go with ten feet to the left before I come back over to here it takes the path of least resistance and goes this way but to give it some character take those sheets and instead of them going drop drop drop drop drop drop so left right left right even though all the water is coming this way dump this stone on a 45 - this one gives it some character even this stone that we're leaning on where it shoots way out in front of here is gonna cause that water even though it's a straight run from here to the next stone that water's gonna twist around this and then come back which gives it a lot of character yeah over dig the whole thing and let the boulders change the shape and then backfill to all them it gives you a lot more create a few transition [Music] this is the start of day two for us so you can see basically almost the entire waterfall has been built we've got to come in with a bunch of dirt retaining stones over here we still have to put the sphere in finish out this waterfalls Nick over here who's gonna happen the machine oh that was nice - what's that shimmy will get rocking and rolling before the guys get here getting this waterfall area done so it'll give them stuff to work on while we continue to move our way up by the bay we got the frame rock in for that waterfall I'm gonna start placing some plants out these guys are gonna finish up edges and basically working their way up to us plants today came to us from Midwest ground covers and Gaudi nurseries their local big girl fantastic plant material very very shade heavy plant palette we've got a paper bark maple here thread leaf maple we got someone steps oil conditioner to throw in as we're planting around this stuff to really ensure the health and lively of these plants but some of you plant nerds out there will already know this stuff we've got some Jack Frost burn era we got some Hawk in a claw which is the Japanese sedge this is I think it's for Eola Allium which can tolerate a fair amount of shade it also likes full Sun creeping Jenny few flats up pachysandra to go underneath this honey locust here we've got a bunch of hostas we've got some astilbe and we've got some quick fire hydrangeas back here so I'm gonna start placing some of these out so that we can keep moving and getting them planted plants are here things are going relatively smoothly so [Music] home stretch right now clients are continuing to go in you can see the guys are starting to finish up the landscape plants are on the back side of that upper pooling area with the urn we're gonna put in a couple more retaining stones down in through here just to help hold back some of that dirt I am super pumped about the progress that we've made a but be more importantly the finished product and how it's really starting to come together I love when the plants everything you're going in it just ties everything back together gets that construction site look out of there and that work of art really could bring it to life so really really excited about this stuff the project what you think necklace won't you won't you give us a walkthrough here buddy Wow nice walk through the cool part about this is like all this rock looks supernatural to the area because we're right by star Rock Illinois which is a state park sandstone is a very prominent still found in this part so I mean it's a natural fit for the area it's a natural fit for the house we're just trying to you know recreate mother nature and I would say we're second only to mother nature if you look at this thing yep Wow this gorgey I love it turned out incredible the plants pulled it all together it just looks absolutely incredible we've got nice little foreground of pachysandra mixed in with some big hostas just I love the way the waterfalls cut back and forth you'll notice that we did squeeze some plants in one on the side that's a super important design technique that we do when we try and teach other contractors and homeowners to do is just get that soft scape in between any kind of staircase or concrete or wood stone steps whatever they are which is really important to soften all this stuff up and through here so it just doesn't look really really Rocky you see a sphere up on top starts everything off the great thing about that sphere is not only can they see it from their bedroom windows which are right there they're great room windows which are right there their front entry which is right there but also their deck up here and we don't need a sizeable berm to retain anything up there so our we have instant height but just look it the waterfalls this is just incredible it looks as if the spear feeds the entire waterfall we got that kind of big sheet style fall there we've got some really really neat whitewater this generated by that and you can see it just flowing over these rocks love how it twists and turns I love this waterfall just looks incredible this rock is really neat because the water just barely comes up across the top crest and then comes back around this little hump right here which is actually out of water this I really need effect birds are gonna love it and of course this is the bottom fall and everything flows down into the reservoir which is underneath these bricks did you see the Aquabot right there which is that exponent something we can kind of just see water as as it's rising in the reservoir to make sure that we know it's full and then we'll end up covering all this back up with gravel pump bolts located down there you don't even know it's there it is so well hidden it just looks absolutely incredible [Music]

Channel: TEAM Aquascape

Views: 162,076

Keywords: Aquascape, Pond Construction, Pond Maintenance, Pond Products, How To, Ponds, Waterfalls, Fountains, Pond Builder, Pond Contractor, Certified Aquascape Contractor, Aquascape Construction, Team Aquascape

Id: STdfuGJEITk

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019