Koi Pond Forum

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What a hoot! I'm learning a lot and fast in regards to the nature of on-line forums.

I will only discuss about it my knowledge about forums in connection with the water garden or water fountain industry. I've decided to join a waterfall and pond related forum and start sharing my somewhat biased views and knowledge about pond liners.

Nowadays, I have discovered that sharing my bias towards pond liners having a forum packed with pond liner installers is one area like trying to pass out Bibles with a porn convention!

Some startling statistics that can explain why:

1. A lot more than 37% of all waterfalls have serious structural damage within Three years of it being built.

2. 57% of house owners say they're rather unsatisfied with all the way their waterfall came out - as soon as the project was completed.

3. Nearly One in three waterfalls and ponds are leaking water within 9 months of completion.

4. 27% of outdoor waterfalls and ponds have pumps which can be either too strong or too weak - causing unnecessary expenditures later on.

5. 63% of 'do It yourselfers' said they wish that they the proper information from the 'get go' or they wished they would have hired someone!

These statistics come from the pond liner industry itself (Bob Wilder, 48-Hour Waterfall). I will confirm and confirm these figures myself. We have built over 1,900 concrete and rebar waterfalls and ponds within the last 30 years. We've ripped out and replaced many defective liner ponds and replaced them concrete ones with lifetime warranties. Pond liner guys will not likely attach greater than a one-year warranty.

They've created no guarantee against rats, mice, ground squirrels, gophers, tree roots and sharp objects. They do know the truth, they just do not share it.

Some guy for the forum was questioning the necessity to fill up the issue basin of an pondless waterfall with loose rock and gravel, thus covering up the sump pump. I thought this was a good question, because I wondered the same thing myself.

Water from your pondless waterfall is captured in a basin at its base. With a liner pond, they teach anytime placing the pump in the bottoom, you then load it up with loose gravel. I'm believing that would create three problems:

If you have to service or clean the garbage over intake of the sump pump, you'll first need to pull out all the stinky, slimy, poopy-laden rock.

The basin wouldn't hold much water when the rock uses up most of the space. If you turn on the waterfall, the majority of the water is sucked in the catch basin ahead of the water can cascade time for the basin.

There'd be no room to setup an auto-fill system, so that you would need to fill the basin area often which has a garden hose to stop the pump from running dry.

So I decided to be a nice guy and post my article, Pondless Waterfalls: Concrete vs. Liners, on the forum. This became a really bad idea - much like trying to untangle a nest packed with rattle snakes.

Before I can post techniques to several questions which were posed by a sincerely curious forum member, I used to be locked out from the website. By guess who? The administrator with the site, who was simply also the owner of the site, the webmaster, and the very guy who made the first inquiry about pondless waterfall construction!

According to him, several forum members complained to him which i was a spammer trying to sell my waterfall system. What? I can't sell concrete and rebar. Nor should i sell high-efficiency centrifugal pumps, or Thoroseal, or galvanized grating to put over the basins, or anti-vortex drains, or rock! What exactly did he mean by saying I used to be trying to sell my system?

Well I soon figured against each other, and it turns out that they probably meant I became trying to malign their system, not sell mine. I did so a little research, and you know what? Mr. Administrator and Mr. Domain Owner has also been a pond liner installer. End of mystery!

Read my article Pondless Waterfall: Concrete vs. Liner and you will get, as Paul Harvey says, "the rest of the story."

Happy koi, peace and joy.