Anyone use these concepts on a garden water feature?

[Alex_H]

I'm about to replace the pump that died last year on our garden fountain feature. I remember struggling with maintaining water, keeping the algae out, etc. It was small with a fraction of the water involved here.

I am contemplating testing it like the pool, tracking it like the pool... using CYA to stop chlorine loss.

Anyone do anything similar? We planned a large water feature but never moved on it, kids want to help build it, so it might come back from the stack of dead ideas, and wanted to know if anyone here maintained one this way?

 

[JoyfulNoise]

I have a dormant waterfall/river-stone water feature near my fire pit. It's basically a pump, two basins and some pipes and that's it. It partially sits under a beautiful mesquite tree in my backyard and that's the problem, the leaf & bean litter is difficult to manage. The first year I ran it I tried my best to keep it chlorinated and it stayed mostly clear but got green and foamy from time to time. It has no filtration so once the debris load gets too high, it's just a soup of organic nastiness.

My plan is to resurrect it and add a Slime-Bag to the output pipe to filter debris. I also plan to start it up with dichlor and then manage it with bleach. Further, I'm going to add probably 200ppm borates to it to see if I can use the biocidal properties of high-concentration borates to keep the algae load down.

It was a "nice idea" when we first did our backyard remodel/landscaping but I now since regret how it was designed. In the future, if we keep it, I may call in a pond & water feature expert to redesign it and update the plumbing with an above ground waterfall pump and cartridge filter. But that's one of those projects that's waaaay low on the priority list.

 

[Swampwoman]

I have a fiberglass waterfall that I generaly remember to dose with a wee bit of chlorine daily when doing the pool.

 

[Alex_H]

So I'm thinking of using a bottom drain and a skimmer, both running through a filter... After what I learned with TFP, I think that filtration + chlorine will work. The water features should need so much less, the easier to handle 1G commercial bleaches (than the 2.5G pool chlorine containers) should work.

Anything wrong with testing CYA and other levels in a fountain as though it's a pool?

Debris and filtering is KEY, the small feature we have (plug in pump on premade shape) has no real filtering, I think I'll add something when I replace the pump.

 

[needsajet]

Mine is very small, around 10 gallons with around a 1/4 gallon per minute bubbler constructed as a bowl of water with white rocks and an urn in the centre with the bubbler at the top. I wrapped extra foam around the little pump that sits under the urn, and the foam needs a cleaning a couple times a year. I fill it with pool water and top it up with pool water approx. 10 times before a rinse/refill. If there's not much evaporation for more than a few days, I add around 1/4 cup of pool chlorine. The rinse is a jet of water to float gunk out from between the rocks and overflow the bowl so the CYA gets diluted. It's been handy and worked better than what I was doing before we had the pool.

 

[Alex_H]

Mine is very small, around 10 gallons with around a 1/4 gallon per minute bubbler constructed as a bowl of water with white rocks and an urn in the centre with the bubbler at the top. I wrapped extra foam around the little pump that sits under the urn, and the foam needs a cleaning a couple times a year. I fill it with pool water and top it up with pool water approx. 10 times before a rinse/refill. If there's not much evaporation for more than a few days, I add around 1/4 cup of pool chlorine. The rinse is a jet of water to float gunk out from between the rocks and overflow the bowl so the CYA gets diluted. It's been handy and worked better than what I was doing before we had the pool.

Is it orange/red, I wonder if we bought the same off the shelf kit?

I like the idea of using pool water... except my pool is in the back of the house and fountain in the front. I wonder if I can put it on the kid's chore chart and have a dedicated measuring device to add.

 

[needsajet]

Is it orange/red, I wonder if we bought the same off the shelf kit?

Sure is!! Sounds familiar

 

[Alex_H]

Sure is!! Sounds familiar

Too funny... okay, foam filter for the win!