waterfall advice

Hi all, I hope you can help me. We wanted a waterfall to go into the pond so my husband made some steps on the rockery for the water to tumble down onto them, this was alright at first then we found the water in the pond was going down to quickly so we thought the water must be going down the back of the steps.
So until we could sort it, we put part of a drainpipe down where the water flows to go onto the steps, this cured the leak, but of course it didn't look very nice. But we did know then for sure that the leak was defently coming from the steps.

I told my husband that i had watched the gardening programme on the TV and they had put a liner down first then added steps afterwards. So i went out and brought a liner big enough to fit the steps and wide enough to cover quite a big area of the rockery. Then i took the steps out and all the rockery and then fitted the liner down and then placed the steps back again and the other rocks.
This seemed to do the trick up to a few days ago when the pond water started to go down again. I knew it wasnt' through evaporation, (well just a little bit was), so my husband looked at it and saw that the water was running down the steps but then hitting the sides and seeping through the rocks so he got the liner and turned it up which seemed to do the trick, but i didn't see that done on the garden programme. Now it has started to leak from somewhere else. Can anyone advise what we can do next?

 

"Maybe the liner has got punctured"

Worth putting some pond underlay under the liner, to prevent it getting punctured from sharp objects under it. We put pond underlay under the large stones we put on top of it too (suitably trimmed so you can't see it - if I was doing it again I would buy Black underlay, not the White we have Doh!)

 

The thing with tv programmes is time, it all goes back to "Blue Peter" with, "Here is one I made earlier"

(Bear with me on this) Take “Ground Force” you know it takes them 2 days, but how long do you see it for? 30 minutes, that’s all. They have to cut some things out in order to make a complete programme. And in the case of GF, most things are done right, but not all (lets leave that for another day) so any other programme will show their way in a short time, because they really have not got the time it needs (or just don’t know)

If you have a waterfall as Kristen says it must have an underlay suitable for the liner, not old carpet or newspapers etc, but a proper underlay. Also if you just lay the liner / underliner combo down water will escape from where ever it can, water always finds its own level (or sneaky way out) so yes it must be raised at the sides. Or put it this way. Its like you walking across say a 4 inch wide board, you would soon fall off, but if I put guide wires up, you could hold on, walk across and not fall off.

I suspect as Kristen says with nothing to protect the underlay you have punctured it, you will have to find and repair the puncture (There may also be more than one)

Or you can use the “punctured liner” as an underlay for a new liner (expensive but you can do it) let us know what you wish to do.

 

Thanks all for the very good advice, will be looking for leaks at the weekend. We haven't heard of pond underlay, but i forgot to mentioned that my husband doubled the liner when he first put it down, and i said they don't do that on ground force, they allow quite a lot of overlap, but he wouldn't have it so i said, ok lets see what happens in a day or two, and of course the pond water went down again, so i took the liner up and put down soft sand first then held the liner up to the light to see if there were any holes but there wasn't any, so i laid the liner down again (single this time) and carefully put all the rocks back in place which was very hard work as the rocks were very heavy. As i said, i thought that had done the trick, but alas it hadn't.
We have now discovered that there may be another leak coming from the other waterfall that runs down a stream into the pond. So we will have to buy another liner for that too but it will have to wait as we go on holiday next week. Oh dear will it ever end. Sometimes i feel like ripping the whole thing out and filling the hole up, but i do like to see the pond. Will send some pics for you to see later.

 

If you look at this place, you can see they supply underlay too.

 

This is before the lining was put down on the steps

 

This was before the liner was down

 

Gutting laid down, doesn't it look horrible

 

water was very murky, but found out that bulb had blown in uv light filter, decided to buy a new unit and water is much more clearer now.

 

this is where the other leak is at the top of the stream

 

Liner now been taken up.

 

I took the liner up which you may remember was doubled. A rare sight to see on last photo of my husband weeding, he dislikes gardening so was doing it under protest, well there is only so much a gal can do isnt' there?

 

liner now opened and covering a lot more space. More rocks put in which on the right side of the steps where difficult to do as i had to stride over the stream and the rocks where so heavy, still i have built up my muscles!

 

we've had this problem before and we have a pre-formed plastic pond! we have a liner under the rocks of the waterfall, but it will escape in the gaps and go under the pond if we're not careful. also im always cleaning out the damn filter box! no matter where we put the pump in the pond, hardly a week goes by before the filter box has to be cleaned out (i take the sponge filters out and wash them). if you leave it and it gets too bad, then sometimes water leaks from the filter box!

fingers crossed ours is ok atm, good luck with yours!