Greetings Everyone

[Jacki G.]

I have a fairly new pond in my backyard that is about 1800 gal with a 1.5ft waterfall that was built by a waterscape contractor last Nov. It's an upgrade from a smaller pond I had built myself. It currently has two small 3" - 4" koi and 10 small gold fish and a few plants in it, around the edge and in the falls. I found this forum because I've had several issues with it so far, that have either been the contractor's doing or because of his lack of help. I had zero problems except for racoons with my previous pond. I'll find the appropriate thread to ask for help with the current issues but the short versions are: 1. the contractor installed the overflow pipe from the skimmer going up hill to my french drain. I live in Northern California, and when we had the huge amounts of rain in Dec. that error caused the water from the drain to be sucked back into my pond, making it a muddy, murky mess, it overflowed and flooded my entire yard and nearly, my house. 2. the pond is now having random, sudden drops in water. It will be fine, staying steady for a week or more and then suddenly drop as much as 4 inches overnight. There are no signs of water spilling outside the pond anywhere. No obviously wet ground or even any soft earth around it.

 

[TheFishGuy]

Welcome! The pond looks great, but I am sorry to hear you have been having so many issues. I am sure everybody here would be more than willing to help out!

 

[Marck]

Greetings, welcome to the Forum.

 

[j.w]

@Jacki G.

 

[Jacki G.]

Thank you

 

[SarahT]

Welcome.
Sorry to hear you've had some pond issues. The water level drop is puzzling. An inch or even two might be evaporation over a couple of days, but not 4 inches. I'm going to assume you hadn't turned on a new waterfall or increased the flow through the waterfall or had a pack of big dogs taking a bath in the pond. How did you or the contractor fix the French drain/ overflow pipe issue?

 

[addy1]

Welcome to the forum. The water loss is puzzling.

 

[Jacki G.]

lol, No, no pack of dogs, new waterfalls or increased flow. It does get pretty windy sometimes but I don't remember it being particularly windy the night before the last drop. The rocks around the outside are a good bit above the water level because we were trying to make it difficult for the racoons to fish. Although I now have a Great Blue Heron that has us on his radar. The dirt around the pond is adobe and it's all still hard as a rock since we haven't had any more rain since the 10" a day for two days in Dec.

As for the contractor....not my favorite person right now. He didn't do anything. "It was too muddy for his crew to work" and he said he would only be responsible for 5ft from the skimmer. The rest was up to me. So, in order to keep my house and yard from flooding again before he could find time to come look, I fixed it myself. I installed a 30" sump pump basin with a float triggered pump, in the ground next to the skimmer, replumbed the skimmer overflow to the basin and ran 60' of 2" pvc pipe out to the front and into the street. I'm in my 60's so that was a lot of work I could have made arrangements for someone else to do or help me do had he told me that or put it in the contract. And now, he wants me to pay him $850 to clean the dirt that settled onto all the rocks from that. I honestly wish I had just gone ahead and built it myself. My response wasn't polite.

 

[Mmathis]

Hello and welcome!

 

[combatwombat]

My response wasn't polite.

Good. What a clown. Welcome to GPF!

 

[GBBUDD]

Welcome,

Nothing worse than hiring a pro and not having them step up to the plate.

In looking at your picture one observation i see is there is a lot of splash from the falls, so much so it's not alot in the photo but it seems even the brick retaining wall is getting wet, which i would bet is outside containment add a good wind and that may explain the drastic water loss. The falls look flat straight across dropping 18 " or so onto a flat rock that is level this is creating lots of evaporation, oxygenation and splash or water loss add sun baking the rocks wind blowing and i can see why some days may have more water loss then others. if that rock at the bottom was like the landing of a ski jump that being pitched down hill from where the water would hit the rock your sp-lash and evaporation would be drastically reduced.

The other note if i was to pick on the work for reasons of water loss is also that the falls stick out past the sides it should be like a horse shoe where the falls have the sides sticking out a bit to catch that splash even if it's only 6 inches out in front that means the water has to plash out that much further to get outside your containment.

 

[addy1]

there is a lot of splash from the falls

@GBBUDD You picked up on that, a lot of the rocks are wet from splash. It also appears that the flat rock is tilted back, maybe. I don't know if you could change that rock, ie tilt it a bit down more, and or add some round rocks on it. Add rocks remove rocks until you get the splash at a lower rate.

I have three waterfalls have moved a lot of rocks to control spash. Move shift until the splash does not go out of the pond.

 

[Lisak1]

Welcome to the GPF!

I looked at your pictures before I read your post and was honestly surprised when you said it was built by a pro. When you say "waterscape contractor" is this perhaps actually a landscaper who agreed to rebuild your pond? Not even knowing your issues with the function of the pond, there are aesthetic things that appear more DIY than pro. And you'd expect a pond pro would know water won't run uphill!

Hopefully you can resolve the functional issues without too much additional cost and trouble.

 

[rubyduby]

Welcome JackiG...You came to the right place to get help and share horror stories I could write a book about being "taken" by pond contractors...I finally found a good one when I moved here to Florida...I, too, am in my 60's and have to do a lot myself because it is so hard to find anyone to do menial labor. My back is in bad shape so even stooping to take the lid off of the skimmer is painful...I share what others have said and hope that the above advice will help to solve your issues...

 

[rubyduby]

you have pretty rocks and your water appears to be nice and clear so there are two positives It does appear that your water level is low on your skimmer weir though. It should be within an inch from the top of the weir if possible (or at least close...mine is about an inch and a half)