I get to redo my pond

[D&RW]

My heart goes out to you. I hate to admit it but I live in fear of leaks. Particularly around the waterfall. Pipes are easy unless they are buried. But the waterfall can be tricky. Still, if you fully encased the entire affair with liner brought up high enough to catch splash and wind surges, then the only possibility for a leak is a hole in that liner, right? I know it's a super pain, but if you bypass and then see no leak, like Dr. Case says you've isolated it. you could then look at the rebuild as an opportunity to improve the look, etc.

Couple small things. One is to check if the liner has pulled away from the spillway in any spot. I'm sure you know to leave enough slack so any settling won't cause this. Two is to add extra layers of scrap liner under the rocks and other materials in the waterfall. you probably did that though.

 

[27goldfish]

I found 1 spot so far where my spray foam did not adhear well. Strem is about 1/4 inch wide. As for the liner, I have 2 layers of liner already on it. To the wind possibility, never had a wind problem before. Two years ago we had roof damage from wind, but no waterfall spray. So, 1/4 stream @ 2000gph. Think that is the only one at one foot lose in 12 hours?

 

[27goldfish]

I sprayed mo foam in from behind on one side. Found 3 small hole. This was obviously causing my unwanted stream. I haven't done the other side as the dirt is pretty dry on it. I also cracked the lid on my pf1!!! I have rtv on it now. I guess that is what I get for lifting a 150lb rock by myself I am going to run the waterfall overnight before I put it back together. That way, if it still leaks, I will have saved some time. The never-ending project has struck again:yikesu:. I will take pics again once I get all the leaks taken care of and my plants grow a little more. Probably another week. This will make week 3 working on the pond!!!

 

[DrDave]

The way I bypassed the waterfall was to take a 4" irrigation flex pipe and taped it to the output of the bio filter (the head of my waterfall), then I ran it directly to the pond. It was the rock falls themselves that turned out to be the leak.
This way, you don't shut off the bio filter.

 

[27goldfish]

Problem is that I have a plumbing t. This runs both the biofilter and spillway. I will try it once the foam dries and see what happens.

 

[D&RW]

BTW. Is that tetra PF 1 enough filtration. Seems kind of small for 1500 gallons?

 

[27goldfish]

My spillway is also a biofilter!

 

[koikeepr]

yeah, waterfalls are usually the number 1 reason for leaks! Good look solving your problem!

 

[27goldfish]

Here we go, I got two leaks fixed. I am also noticing that rocks that shouldn't be wet, well, are soaked :lol: The sprayfoam is saturated. Could this be my problem?

 

[Daytongirl]

i have fether rock around mine, light weight but use gloves!

 

[nigil]

Watch how the falls hit the water. Your spray from that can be causing the extremely wet rock, and it will lead to water loss, but should not have caused the water loss you were talking about. I have been losing about a half inch a day since my pond is in full sun and has no lilly coverage yet. It can be frustrating trying to figure it out since there are so many variables. Hope everything works out!

 

[27goldfish]

I am loosing like 4 inches per day. I found all my leaks that were causing water to go behind the fall.

 

[27goldfish]

I found a problem. I left too much foam in some spots. That seemed to have slowed my leak down. I still have rocks getting wet that shouldn't, but they are not nearly as bad!! Still working on it, but progress is very slow

 

[27goldfish]

I THOUGHT I found my problem. Next week I am going to be spending a lot of that week working on my waterfall. I will rebuild it again