Gainesville Project Features Waterfall, Beach, Pool

Text and photos courtesy of Florida Water Gardens

This residential project in Gainesville, Fla., consisted of transforming the 10-acre property’s drain area into a 75-foot by 65-foot by 6.5-foot-deep decorative water feature with a great view from the home.

before

after Click here for slideshow.

Next, we reshaped the pond area, created shelves and graded the pond bottom for the proper flow into the bottom drains. On the opposite side of the waterfalls, we created a large, shallow area for a sandy beach and a wading pool within the larger pond. Plumbing for the customized bottom drains and air diffusers ran to the pump and filter on the rear upper area of the waterfalls almost 10 feet above water level.

We installed three Big Bahamas skimmers with all the plumbing running to the pump and filter area. Next came the underlayment and.45 mil EPDM PondGard liner. Using a crane, we unrolled two rolls of 45-foot by 100-foot liner and seamed them together with Firestone Quick Prime Plus and 6-inch, single-sided cover tape.

Using a 200-ton crane, we placed boulders weighing up to 20 tons each along the inside shelf of the pond and left room for aquatic plantings to be added later. This time-consuming process required much thought on where to place each boulder, how to strap each boulder and how to get the steel cable out from under each boulder. The process of moving, setting up and leveling a 200-ton crane also takes a few hours. Each steel cable used to sling the boulders weighed 300 pounds, so strapping and unstrapping the boulders took time and muscle.

Then we cleared the waterfall area and placed the liner into position. The waterfall boulders were the largest and heaviest, and we had to trim some tree branches to get the crane close enough to the area to use it. Even then, we had to physically push some of the boulders into place.

The 120-foot-stream features multiple drops into the hill that sloped down from the house to the pond. We installed underlayment, liner and stones. We placed a 1.5 hp F&Q submersible pump in one of the skimmers and ran a 4-inch PVC line to a custom bog at the beginning of the stream.

With the stream and waterfall completed and the underwater lighting system in place, we finished installing the three Aqua Ultima II 30,000 filters and three 400-watt Viper stainless-steel ultraviolet sterilizers, filled the pond and fired up the waterfalls’ three 2.5 hp Performance Pro pumps achieving a total of almost 35,000 gallons per hour. Aquatic plants and large koi were added a few weeks later.

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Gainesville Project Features Waterfall, Beach, Pool

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