Garden Pond and Waterfall Leak

One day my husband came in and asked if we had had much rain earlier that day. It turns out that when he pulled a couple of weeds near our garden pond and waterfall, he found the ground to be rather wet. We had not had any appreciable rain and as we investigated further, it turned out that there was some standing water in another area of the garden and “bubbles” under the pond liner in the stream section. I had seen these bubbles before, only much worse, shortly after we had had the pond installed. At that time they were caused by an uneven settling of the waterfall filter container that allowed water to pour over a back corner and get under the liner.

We decided to turn the pump (waterfall) off overnight. In the morning there was no standing water and no bubbles. We turned the pump back on in the morning and within a few hours the bubbles and standing water were back. Now we knew that when the waterfall was off, there was no leak. The hunt was on for the source.

Water was flowing properly from the waterfall container and not over a back corner as it had previously. As we traced the wet soil, it continued up the berm towards the waterfall. Finally it looked like the only way to trace the source further was to turn off the pump again and disassemble the waterfall. When we lifted off the fake spillway rock, we found the culprit. A root of a nearby tree had worked its way between the pond liner and the waterfall filter container, breaking the seal and allowing water to seep under the liner.

Now all we had to do was fix the broken seal and we should be back in business. This was easier said than done however. I’ll explain the process in my next installment.