Building A Waterfall

The main backyard project these days is creating a small waterfall under the peepal tree. I've fiddled with the rocks a bit, and got the water flowing almost right - so I know I can do it. The trick, though, is to do it by recycling the water - as it is now, it waters the garden below when I turn it on - the onions, garlic, shadowbenny (cilantro), chives and basil - which is well and good, but overwatering isn't good and the hill underneath the stones gets eroded.

Plus, not all the water is going where I want it to go. Thus the waterguide I built in about 10 minutes (which you can see in the picture). I used my Dremel to quickly trim some 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe to the length of some plexiglass that was lieing around, and sliced them on one side so that they pop over the edges of the plexiglass - forming a tension clamp which, even when not watertight, guides the water in the direction I want it to go. Simple, low tech, and also allows a background of the hill underneath the stones. With time, the heat will bend it to conform to the heat - especially with the weight of the rocks, and the hill will conform to the plexiglass.

The only problem with this is that water flow on plexi acts as a lubricant, so some anchoring stones will have to be chosen and anchored at the edge of the horizontal waterguide with silicon. This will also break the straight line of the plexi as the water falls over it, so that it looks more natural. An interesting alternative I had considered involved bamboo waterguides, and I may try that in the future. Splitting the bamboo and removing the separations in the stalks would also be effective, though the flow would be more direct and less controlled. One could also cut smaller pieces of PVC and clamp them as I did on the watering edge, which would create interesting dispersal patterns - but would look unnatural.

Next, the problem is collecting the water below - which itself is a difficulty. I'd considered a plexiglass reservoir below, behind, but that would limit what could be done with the stones - and not all the stones are there in the picture. Then I realized I had some half barrels lieing around. Blue. Blue is OK. Or I could use a barrel away from that which collects the water after it runs down the waterfall - placed near the waterfall itself.

But the next problem remains with the water that is lost underneath the rocks on the way down the hill - so I thought to build a full plexiglass container with reservoir. But then the stones would be hard to situate, and so forth. The problem is getting the back of the waterfall watertight while allowing for the stones to assume a shape and settle against the hill naturally. The first idea was garbage bags for a liner, but over time garbage bags rot. Digging around through the junk downstairs, I found some plastic that could work for a few years, and I'll probably use that (unless I find something better).

After I thought about all of this, then I searched around the internet for what others have written about building their own waterfall - and if you're interested in doing it, I found this About.com article useful - How to Build Outdoor Waterfalls. It actually had all the stuff that I had already figured out, though within guidelines that I think are a bit limiting in that they assume you can get certain things by going to Home Depot. I don't have a Home Depot in Trinidad. So I do what I can with what I have - as usual - and make it work.

Last but by no means least is the pump issue. I did some searching around, and found some pumps that are pretty cost effective and use solar energy, and which I am considering ordering. The first is the MINI SOLAR PUMP KIT 35GPH 12, which is a nice looking system. The second, which I prefer technically because of better flow rate, is the STI Smart Solar SunJet 150 Solar-Powered Water Pump. Unfortunately, there's no shipping outside of the U.S. for the second pump at this time (how typical!), so I'm looking around for more options. I already have a solar system in place which could power a system, and all I really need is a DC pump of equivalent flow rate. Someone had suggested a windshield washer pump, but the flow rate is too low and the noise is not something I'm fond of. I'll ask my Uncle who runs Rampersad's Electrical what he thinks tomorrow - he may have an old pump lieing around somewhere. In a box (private joke).

Building a waterfall is not really a complicated technical issue, especially if you already have the hill. But I think it's fair to say that you have to know what you want to get what you want... like all other things. For me, the sound of water over the rocks is important - done right, the different rocks and positions can make a symphony out of a flow, or it can be a boring drip-drip-drip. Sometimes you want the drip-drip-drip, sometimes the burbling of an active waterfall... The technical end is easy to handle with a variable speed pump (or a rheostat on the pump), but the stone positioning of the waterfall itself has to handle the two extremes if you want that variance - and that's where experimentation is important.

If it seems like a lot of trouble to just water some rocks, well... it may be. But it's an excuse to use some tools, and to recycle some of the junk that has accumulated at this house for the last 25 years. Some people think you need places to buy things to get things to work... sometimes you just need to look at what you can do with what you have first.