[mrusk]

I have a client that recently moved here from the UK. They want some time of water feature in the front of there house. NOT A POND AND NOT A Water fall.


They are looking for some type of fountain where the water shoots out of the ground and falls into river rock, or something along those lines.

Has anyone ever done anything similar to this or has another idea? We are going for a european look here.

Right now i have two brick pillars with 12inch sheer decent waterfalls on the plan. But i want some more ideas.

Matt

[P-Train]

Could you please post a picture of the area?

[Mac]

sounds like you are talking about a pondless waterfall. Im not terribly fond of them but its not my opinion that matters.

[GLAN]

They want a geyser.....simple enough


Same principle for doing a water less pond.......except there is no water fall and you need a pump to shoot water straight up in the air.

There are realy small kits on the market......not much of water impact......but cute none the less......in a small area the kits are kinda nice.........I have one in the back........threw it in for poops and giggles, since I have a pond at the other side of the back yard.

[Stonehenge]

www.landscapingpennsylvania.com - one of the pics in the portfolio is exactly what you're talking about (except the water wasn't running yet). I can't recall Matt's username here, but he does frequent here (I built his website).

He can probably give you some pointers.

[Matt Kulp]

Mrusk,
There are a ton of looks you could get from what you describe in your post. The system you are looking for is a simple pondless waterfall kit. Where and how you have the water exit the system is where your design comes in, but the "guts" of the system will all be the same. If you go to the site listed above and go to the gallery, you will see a pic of a limestone boulder that is sticking up out of river jack. That boulder has a 2" hole bored up through the center and peculates water at the top with no water visible in the river jack. You can't see it, but there is about 1,000 gal of water in the pit.

[mrusk]

Looks like the customers want to go with a irregular flag stone circle with the center removed with a drilled boulder.

[Matt Kulp]

Sounds nice!

How big of an area will you have for river gravel on the inside of the flagstone?

You will want to make sure you have enough room for the splash. If you don't want a splash effect, I would make sure you grind the top of the boulder smooth if you don't have a whole lot of room to have the water sheet off uniform. If you have any dips or imperfections on the top of the stone, you will get some "jump" to the water and it will splash out. Make sure your pit is deep enough to handle a fair amount of water, or talk them into an automatic fill system. Make sure to post some pics, sounds like an interesting feature.

[JEJ]

Can anyone give a detail for this type of pondless feature? I've built one but would like to see how others have done it. We used a larger boulder with a hole bored in it, dug a pit maybe 3' wide by 3' deep and supported the boulder on top of a barrel that had been used for biodiesel. We used some stainless steel mesh to support the smaller stones surrounding the boulder. It was a hassle to maintain/ clean but looked awful nice.

Anyone have any thoughts on simplifying?

[kinnanscaping]

I am in the process of setting up a waterless pond for the neighbor. I am using thee basalt columns of varied heights that have been cored out (two by myself) and they will actually shoot a little bit of water out towards the center of one another. I am installing a 1/50th hp pump with a cross coupling coming out to three 3/8" lines, each having their own ball valve in order to control flow to the varied-height columns. I will post a pic when complete, but I really wanted to add this:

The guy at the pond supply place tried to sell me on an expensive pump that had WAY to much flow for the task. He then tried to sell me on a "vault," 30" high at a cost of $150. Mind you, I want a waterless pond with 3/8" worth of water coming through. He told me that I could hold something like 500 gal in the system. I didn't have to fill up the whole thing with river rock, I could just use a roll of corrugated pipe as fill; that'd save on cost, he said. But isn't that saving on an already unnecssary cost to begin with?
I had to be mindful of evaporation and wind displacement and lack of homeowner upkeep, he said. All of which are true, BUT do I really need to add the labor costs to dig a 4'x4'x30" deep hole? What would be wrong with 100 gallons of water in the system? Even then, I just put on a $8 shut-off. Why do I really need to add to the cost for the homeowner, too?
To make a long story longer, I am only going to excavate 9" sloping to my 18" cutout for my half a 5-gallon bucket that I drill holes into to allow water to come in but goo to stay out.

My opinion only, and I don't have much experience either.

[ianc]

I was at a Pond Build Workshop in Saginaw MI last week
part of the demonstration was a splash fountain and was identical to what you are looking for - you dig a pit large enough to house 2 matrix boxes (tightly woven plastic bokes that snap into place to provide a 4'x4'x8" water chamber - drop a liner in the pit - inlay the matrix boxes place your stone onto the boxes and fill the area with stone