Waterfall spillover too wide?

[SouthFL2016]

Hi! I recently had my old brick spillover replaced on my spa with a travertine spillover. While the water used to spill over the brick with more distance from the wall, the new situation has the water spilling over just a few inches and then running down the wall, even at 2700 RPM. The pool builder put a rounded edge on the spillover and now says that edge needs to be cut off. They say a sharper edge will let the water flow straight over the stone and give a waterfall effect.

Does the physics of that sound right, or is the spillover too wide regardless for a waterfall effect?

Also, a local pool guy told me I should just block up all the return jets in the main pool to force all the water to return through the spa jets, which would solve my problem without needing to cut the stone. Does that sound right? Doesn't that create a circulation problem in the main pool? I have a slam system by the way.

Thanks.

 

[mas985]

Hi! I recently had my old brick spillover replaced on my spa with a travertine spillover. While the water used to spill over the brick with more distance from the wall,

Was the spillover the same length? The smaller the spillover area, the further the spillover will reach at a give GPM. You can actually calculate how far it should reach based upon the dimensions and the flow rate.

http://www.lmnoeng.com/Waterfall/waterfall.php

 

[SouthFL2016]

Yes, the old spillover was the same length, but the brick was sharp edged and also nowhere near as smooth/slick as the travertine.

I read on the internet something about putting a silicone bead at the bottom edge of the spillover to impede the water from running against the wall, and cause a normal spillover. Have you ever heard of that working?

 

[Jimrahbe]

South,

I have three smaller waterfalls similar to yours. All of them have a groove cut into the underside of the stone lip, 3/8" wide, 1/2" deep set back about 1/2" from the front. This groove, which is done a lot on older style window sills, keeps the water from moving back along the bottom side of the stone. It is what I believe should have been done to begin with, and would be similar to what the silicone bead is supposed to do.

Jim R.

 

[mas985]

It could work. It would work like a drip edge but it needs to be very narrow.

 

[pamela2020]

I love your spa and tile and spillway. Did you get it fixed? I'm trying to avoid the same problem. Also, can you tell me the dimensions of your spa? Ours is not going to be deep enough (8' x 4'6") unless it projects into our pool by 14" (8'x5'4"), but it looks so much better the way you have it flush.

Pam C.

 

[SouthFL2016]

Hi there. We were never able to get the water spilling cleanly over the edge, but we were able to increase the pressure enough so the water spills about 70% over the edge with the rest hitting the wall. We're very happy with it. The solution for us was this: Our pool installer had originally put in new jets that had the rotating ball socket piece inside the jet (so you can direct the flow up, down, etc), but it turns out that was creating a problem of sending the pressure in the wrong direction back into the pipes because the ball pieces closed up the jets' openings too much. A pool repair guy came out and removed all the ball pieces, which returned the jets to full hole size, and presto, we had a major increase in pressure.

Our spa is 8' x 4'9". The lip of the spillway hangs 1" over the edge, so almost flush. Like I said, we don't have a perfect wall of glassy water spilling into the pool, but we happen to not prefer that. We like the more choppy spill effect, i.e. waterfall sound.

Another thing to consider is how slanted off level the spillway is. Ours could probably have been slanted a tiny bit more, which may have helped get more separation of water from wall, but I can't be certain how much it would have helped since the major factor here is the 8' of spillway.

I also can tell you that nobody ever complained about our spillover