Water feature

Hi,

I wasn't going to put a water feature in my garden but as time has gone on I have decided that the extra dimension would be welcome. I have a low voltage cable that I have already laid at the bottom of my garden so I am limited to a low voltage pump. Whilst at the garden centre yesterday, I saw this water feature: http://www.oak-barrel.com/stainless_steel_water_features/silver_tower.htm
I think this stainless tower would look fantastic down the bottom of my garden, on a slate bed with some grasses in front of it, lit up a night. I have 2 issues, firstly all these kits come with a high voltage pump, which I can't use and secondly, the price seems way high. I can get a stainless tower made to my spec for about �£60, Iâ��m guessing but I'm sure I can get a decent pump for around �£100.

Why pay nearly �£300 when I can build one for half that price? It seems to me that the only reason these features use a high voltage pump is that the whole of the tower contains water, what a waste of energy! Wouldn't a more economical solution be to weld and seal plates 6â� from the top, then drill a hole in it for the hose to go through? Then when the trough fills, it spills over the front. If you made the front edge 5mm lower than the back, the water would fall over the front and you hardly notice the difference in height. In conclusion, hopefully because less water is being used, the pump can be less powerful therefore a low voltage one can be used. Can anyone recommend a pump and suggest anyways helping the planning and production of this project? How do I work out how powerful I need the pump to be? How will I know how much water I need to move?

 

To judge how big a pump you need, run a known volume of water (say 10 litres) over the lip of your water feature (or a mock up), at a rate which gives the effect you are after.

Time how long the water lasts.
Divide 3600 (seconds per hour) by this time (in seconds) multiply by the volume of water = litres per hour you want.
Do this a few times to even out experimental error.

Choose a pump with a higher rate than this, making allowance for the loss of performance due to the distance between the pump & the high point of the system (Head). These figures should be printed on the packaging.

If a low voltage pump isn't up to the job, then a bit of creative engineering could give an intermittent feature fed by a slow filling / quick emptying resevoir filled by a low voltage pump.

Setting this up & fine tuning would be a great way to spend a summers afternoon.