Problems

Water Running Up Hill

The first problem we had was the water ran up the stream bed. It seemed that our stream bed did not have sufficient slope to it. We did a temporary fix by attaching the black pipe to the filter. This way the water entered the stream far enough away from the high end to keep the water from running out the top.
We attempted to fix the problem by building up a pile at the top end of the stream. We used the quickrete pictured and some small river rock to give it a nice appearance.
Too bad it didn't work. The water still ran up the stream and dribbled out the back. Robert had to remove all of the material that we had added to the back of the stream. We decided to try building up the wall again, but this time, we used flashing to be sure that there would be no seepage up the top of the stream.
We used quickrete to attach the flashing. This worked, and so we finished the surface like we had before, building up a pile using quickrete and small river rocks.

Draining the Pond
The pond draining was a major problem. For whatever reason, the flow between the upper and lower pond would be blocked. If the pump kept pumping, the upper pond overflowed to the garden and the lower pond was emptied. The potential problems from this included ruining our pump and killing our fish.
Robert installed a sump switch in the lower pond to stop the draining. The switch works by opening the circuit when the water is no longer touching both prongs. This almost always worked, but one time a big leaf was left touching the prongs, closing the circuit, so the pump kept going even though the level of the water had dropped below the two prongs.

I don't remember why we have a checkvalve in the system. We must have been concerned about backflow somewhere.

Parts List

Quantity DESCRIPTION PRICE ($)
1 Vinyl Patch 5.29

1 Water Stop 8.49

1 Sump Pump Switch (solid state) 50.00

1 1/2" Check Valve 2.00

Previous stream tour stop
Next stream tour stop

Jennifer

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This page was last modified Thursday, 02-Sep-1999 08:02:50 PDT

Quantity	DESCRIPTION	PRICE ($)
1	Vinyl Patch	5.29
1	Water Stop	8.49
1	Sump Pump Switch (solid state)	50.00
1	1/2" Check Valve	2.00