It was still leaking . . .

Went out this morning and it had lost all the water down to the bottom of the skimmer opening again which means we did not find the leak yesterday - we may have found a small leak, but not the one that was really causing trouble. Bummer. So, look closely at the above picture. On the left, behind the hibiscus with the closed pink flowers is a large gray square rock - that's the skimmer. In front, toward the right is a bush and if you look closely, you'll see some metal ducks in front of the rock wall. The rocks between those two points all got moved and replaced (after the liner was fixed and roots removed) yesterday. Today, we did from the ducks all the way up the right side, past where you can see and redid the entire upper spill pond (pics later).

Of course we started at the front of the pond and worked our way up the hill - that was a mistake, but we didn't know it at the time. It wasn't until we got to the very top of the pond that we actually found the leak and after moving the first rock or two and pulling back a the rhododendron and some pine stray this is what we saw . . . pretty obvious that the waterfall was just spilling down the side of the hill . . . Unfortunately, it was because the guy who originally installed it cut the liner way, way too close. So we had to redo the entire right side of the water fall and the whole spill pond. I had to put a rock wall behind the liner of the spill pond because that was the only way to loosen the liner up enough to stand it up so that the water wouldn't go over the edge of it. Basically, that meant moving not only every rock in the waterfall but every rock that went around the little spillway pond and since it was full of rocks, all of those too. But the pond is much nicer now because the rocks that originally fronted the biofalls had long ago fallen down and nobody every put them back up - until today. So the entire thing looks sooo much better - wanna see?

This is the new front (even better than yesterday). We built a little stairway and a viewing platform because Casey was going CRAZY trying to see 'her' fish. She used to love sitting on the bridge and watching them but since the bridge rotted I had the last guy get rid of it. That nice flat rock is totally sturdy, you can stand on it and feed the fish and watch them. The second pic is the right side wall which is no longer covered with leaves, pine needles and other gunk.

This is the waterfall from the left side of the pond. The walls on both sides were straightened up and the wall on the far side was completely rebuilt. You can see the little spill pond in this shot and there are now rocks where the biofalls starts the waterfall. The biofalls is a huge black plastic box burried in the side of the hill behind those topmost rocks. It's ugly and better covered by rocks now.

These are two views of the top of the waterfall. The big flat rock is covering the opening to the biofalls and the water falls into the little spillway pond and then goes down another waterfall which you can see in one of the earlier pictures. You can now see only rocks under the water falling down into the spillway pond where before it was ugly black plastic. The entire front and side (as seen in these pics) had to be rebuilt. It looks sooo much better. Now if it just holds water . . . .