I now wish I had a larger plot of land. I always wanted a stream running through my garden. I also wish I lived at the bottom, rather than the top of a hill. It would probably be awkward for me to attempt to locate a pump out near the edge of my property to push the water back up hill. Don't think I'd have an easy time getting electricity down there.

Thanks for the interesting illustrated story. (One GIF - sumplan.gif - was apparently corrupted, the rest worked fine.)

Regards,
Dave

Dave Westendorf Psychology University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR 72701

dwestern@comp.uark.edu voice: (501)-575-5811 fax: (501)-575-3219

I live on the rainy side of the island of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. The trade winds bring us something like 300 inches annual rainfall here on the northeast coast. The terrain is what the geologists call "deeply incised" -- lots of small, fast streams have cut steep-sided valleys on their way to the ocean.

My location is too remote to be on the public water and drain systems, but we do quite well with a roof catchment system for rainwater and a giant storage tank which is nearly always overflowing. The local building code required us to have an engineer set up a self-contained disposal system consisting of an underground settlement tank and outflow field, which has been adequate for our household so far. Still, I would like to have a gray-water system for the laundry waste water, partly to keep the patch over the outflow field from getting too soggy in periods of peak use, and partly because I hope that soapy water might benefit our soil, which is overly acidic.

Oddly enough, amidst this wealth of water, my two acres has only a shallow, dry stream bed on it -- shallow, because it was never a very big or very regular stream, and dry, because to run a highway through our corrugated landscape the road engineers had to cut the road bed lower than the former stream bed upstream of my land. So now whenever we get a heavy rain, the water that would have gone to "my" stream forms a waterfall on the other side of the highway and flows beside the road for a hundred meters or so until it comes to the next place where the highway is higher than the surrounding land instead of lower, at which point it pours off the road and joins another stream. (Are you picturing this?)

I am toying with the idea of creating a chain of small ponds and streams by circulating water along the former stream bed. The gray-water system could be separate; mostly, I would like to have a stream. This area was very productive in old Hawaiian days, until the native population was drastically reduced by introduced diseases, to the point where they could not sustain their economy. Pineapple grew here for a while, then it was part of a ranch for several decades. I have replanted some native trees, and hope to plant more. With a restored stream, I could have the sound of a waterfall, a patch of taro, maybe water lilies and koi.

The practicalities, however, are daunting. It's easy to grow things here, but hard to keep the weeds, and even the intended plantings, under control. It would take a lot of excavation, and a lot of liner material, to make a stream and ponds. I am hoping to learn that some of the naturally occuring local rocks and clays might hold water well enough on their own to avoid the need for liners -- after all, the old Hawaiian taro farmers didn't have polythene. I might also save on operating costs by using photoelectric power or (is this too hopelessly romantic?) a windmill to run the pumps, but the initial cost would probably be substantial.

I very much appreciate your detailed and practical account of your project. It leaves me with a sense that such a thing can be done, but perhaps only by an unusual person. I hope that the right kind of madness proves to be contagious.

Sincerely,
Michael Popovici

P.S. I must say it again, simply amazing

Our project right now is to build a small (1.5' h) weir. We have created a small pond at one point in the stream, but I am unhappy with the damming. We have stone steps going down each side of the creek and stepping stones across. The weir we have now is too close to these and does not suit me esthetically.

I may have my husband create and rearrange water features, but I don't ask him to move around the sofas or grand piano. And I haven't asked him to create an entire river!--But I am becoming more and more interested in collecting gray water. Maybe next summer.

At any rate, thank you for your web page with so much description and so many schematics. It really was fun to go through it.

Oh, I connected to you through http://www.fishlinkcentral.com/ which I, in turn, found via rec.ponds

Paule Chalmers

Two things; I remember you posting an account of the progress with the river after setting up, including the dreaded insecticidal shampoo disaster. It's a shame you couldn't include that on the web page. Also, I'm surprised to hear that you've closed the experiment down in favour of something a little more ordinary. Have you made use of what you learned from the river project in the new pond?

I've been back to visit my folks recently, and have been pleased to see that our reed bed system is working pretty well. We've got a 10'x10' pond with a heavy stocking of orfe, koi and goldfish. The water is pumped by amphibious pump through a UVC to a large coldwater storage tank filled with submerged brushes, at a head of about 5'. That provides sedimentation time. It overflows from there through spraybars and overflow pipes into a large tank of graded gravel and stones.

From there, the water flows into a quarter circular pond, radius about 5', depth about 6''. It's filled almost to the top with pea gravel, and planted. Last weekend, I counted about half a dozen plant species, including watercress, zebra rush, irises, dwarf bullrushes.....

Return to the pond is via a stream with 3 or 4 small pools built in and over a waterfall. The water has to overflow the reed bed, go under a wrought iron fence, and execute two 90 degree bends. The main pond is made of butyl, but the reed bed and most of the stream/waterfall system are lined with a commercial PVC type liner. The reed bed is a raised type pond, built in stone on top of patio flagstones, and most of the stream system has cement underneath the liner.

I know exactly what you mean when you mention the difficulty of tracing and eliminating leaks; the overflow from the reed bed used most of a standard tube of bathroom sealant. The first two 'pools' of the stream system were horrendous, involving relaying with a huge overlap.

It's well worth it, though, even though I get to see it too seldom these days. I'm still on the phone most weeks as Unpaid Pond Consultant to my father....

Cheers,
Steve

In fact, yours was one of the first pages I found regarding water gardening on the web and is probably solely responsible for my building a pond in my living room. The pond is functioning beautifully, looks amazing, and is even more fun to maintain than it was to build.

My filter is currently about 1/5 the volume of the pond and consists of several stages. The baterial medium is disposable plastic forks which were inexpensive and seem to do quite well. I would really like to add a reed bed stage like you have done at some point, and cascade its runoff into the main pond.

The red-eared sliders and koi seem to coexist with no trouble, perhaps because the comets are a tastier treat, and thankfully inexpensive. They reach a certain size and are thereafter ignored by the turtles.

There's nothing particularly notable in this email message, but you can post it to your page if you so desire.

-DanD

Thanks for sharing.

Charmaine McCleave

Evaporation was not a concern until now. I live in the Midwestern part of the United States and it gets very hot and dry in the summer. I will not be able to reclaim water as you have and will need to give some serious thought to my water bills. Great job. Both on the river and the story.

Tom McKaig

Sue Hanenkrat
Tillamook, Oregon (ORY-gone)