Pondless Waterfall - Lake Macquarie, NSW Australia
“The pond creates a cooling microclimate for our tropical plants, exactly what we were hoping for!”
Background
After receiving a Project Estimate in 2020, the client had completed several milestone projects around their property and turned the attention to the water feature. United Waterscapes was contacted by the client for an updated Project Estimate and the project was booked to be finished just in time for Christmas! The client had designed and installed a beautiful tropical garden, and the pondless waterfall water feature was to be the icing on the cake. Upon updating the Project Estimate, United Waterscapes provided a fully redesigned Design Concept document to the client who accepted the proposal.
The proposal included scope for a 6m (L) pondless waterfall with a 1000L Aquascape pondless reservoir and and Aquascape Spillway Bowl and Basin set. The project was estimated to take 3-4 days to complete.
The Project
The Pondless Waterfall was located on a suburban property with narrow streets and a very small amount of roadside verge. Thankfully there was no footpath on that side of the road and no services, as access was very tight for deliveries, staging and positioning the 6.5t excavator. As pictured, the steep driveway, stairway and posts were constantly slowing us down, and gardens were well grown in with retaining walls so we had to work around everything with tricky conditions to sling the boulders across from the steep driveway to the water feature area.
The excavation for the pondless reservoir went smoothly with good digging conditions at depth and the team was able to install the Elevate EPDM pond liner and geofabric, with the Aquascape Pondless Waterfall Vault and Aquablox components inside.
One of the challenges on this project was the first time delivery of stone from the supplier meant that 90% of the load was large boulders roughly the same size. You would normally work of a 1:2:1 ratio where half of the rock is medium sized, and the remaining half split between larger and smaller boulders about 50/50. The large boulders made the project slighlty more complex than usual, and extra care was taken to ensure that the boulders selected for each position worked so there was a lot of positioning and repositioning, sometimes removing the boulders altogether to flip them for a better fit and this was all very time consuming.
The weather was extremely hot, and with a west facing aspect the afternoon sun absolutely baked that area, but we persevered and completed the project on time and on budget.
The Result
We could not have been happier with the end result for this pondless watefall. The project was built to specification and includes the Aquascape Spillway Bowl and Basin set, and low voltage LED lights installed under waterfalls and in the landscape.
The Aquscape Pondless Waterfall Vault contains an Aquascape AquaSurge Adjustable Pump, with an output of 15,000-30,000lph, with about 2/3 of the flow directed to the Aquscape BioFalls 2500 for filtration, and the remaining third to the Aquascape Spillway Bowl and Basin set. Water Quality in the stream will be maintained by an Aquascape IonGen2, and an Aquascaoe Automatic Dosing System For Ponds. In addition, 6 x 1-watt LED Lights and 2 x 3-watt LED lights make for a spectacular sight in the evening hours.
The clients are very happy with the end result and have been sending regular updates and photos about the cooling effect of the microclimate, doves that drop buy for their daily drink and the serenade of frogs who have happily moved in to their new home. Very happy with the outcome of this project.
