How do I stop with pond-less water feature flooding?
by Honour
+7
This year I redesigned my garden to get rid of my lawn, best thing I ever did! We love the result. I put in a small stream with a 1000 lt sump , the man with the digger got a bit carried away I feel!! At first I was topping it up every day due to evaporation and porous Stone, had to change them! I therefore only ran it 4hrs a day ,when we would be out sitting. Now we have had rain the sump is filling very quickly, should I just run the water fall/stream for longer and if so how long roughly. Thanks everyone.
It should not be flooding, unless too much rain over filled the pond. Running it this time of year won't make much difference unless you're in a hotter climate, to assist with evaporation.
You may need to pump out some excess water to return it to normsl level. You have no real lawn to assist with absorption of excess water.
Thanks Olivia , no lawn but plenty of boarder and pumping out a good possibility should the worst happen I’m in the UK but you never know these days what the weather will throw at us!!😖😖
Your garden is beautiful. Running the stream pump might help a bit. But, yes I agree you may need to pump some water out.
Can you install some type of overflow pipe, so that if it rains too much, the excess will run off into an area where it can soak in? In the US, it is against the law to "collect" rainwater and then drain it onto a neighbor's property, but if you make a small rain garden next to your water garden, on your property, that should handle it. For mine I dug out a two foot deep trench, lined it with Geofabric, and then filled it with small boulders. It captures the water running off my driveway and holds it back from the neighbors who are downhill from me, and then it soaks into the ground.
Love the look but could you use the same look elsewhere.
Seeing the flow of water is so small, could you try using Silicone spread out, copying the style look of the flow of the water, then smoothing it out and finishing with high gloss varnish so it would look like water. Having small rocks & greenery around looking the genuine article.
The girls would love it as they could have fairies and add their own special fun ideas , bridges, butterflies the little cottages , pathways etc for their special creative look.
Boys would love tiny cars, bridges, tunnels, short imitation train tracks, all to create their special look around the stream, holiday time for kids is a bore for them, so help them to be creative.
You need to extend the creek bed look across the property at a level to allow drainage of the excess water away from your property. When there’s no rain it will be a dry creek bed but still attractive permanent landscaping.
Thanks for all the helpful suggestions everyone.
I think your pond and garden look beautiful. Would you be able to re-direct excess water, via a pipe system perhaps, into a water container. You would need to place the pipe up high so it could drain into the water container. If you had a pump, then you could maybe, pump the saved water into the pond when the water is low. Just an idea. When my pond has overflowed (rarely because we live in Sydney and have had a dreadful drought for a couple of years), it has just flowed into the surrounding garden. My frogs love it.