Courtyard gardens just scream out for wall water features, there were no exceptions for this lovely courtyard garden located in Altrincham. The tranquil sound of water attracts lots of wildlife especially when located in rural areas.
Wanting a big change
Previously, the customer already had a water feature in place but this looked tired, old and was well in need of a revamp. The current feature consisted of a rusty water blade, a pump which was too large for the feature, leaking fittings and an old warped plastic base / vat to hold the water. The brickwork on the wall had started to crack because there were no support over the old water blade. After a long discussion with the client we decided that the best way to keep it in theme would be to create a brick feature and incorporate a new stainless steel water blade with LED lights. Exciting work ahead!
Where to start on building the water feature
Firstly, we had to size the feature pond to fit nicely and evenly between the brick wall bays. Then we had to create foundations for the block work to be laid on so the water feature base was flat. The pre-war Cheshire brick wall had several cracks so these had to be removed and relaid correctly to stop more cracks from happening again. We used an L-shaped steel lintel to secure the brickwork sitting above the new blade to stop further failure in the brick and to add extra support.
Building the new bespoke water feature with water blade
Now the foundations were in we could focus on building the water feature itself. For the internal wall we used standard concrete block and tied these into the outer wall of Cheshire pre-war brick. The pre-war brick was an almost identical match to the old wall build behind the feature. With the feature being build against a wall it was ideal for discreetly hiding the pipework so a large 50mm hole needed to be drilled through the wall so we could go through the wall and around the back with the new pipework.
With the pond part of the feature complete we had to get accurate internal measurements. We wanted the liner to be as tidy looking as possible so with the measurements we ordered a 0.75mm rubber boxweld liner, this had a standard 15cm lip across the top. Boxweld liners are great, they are basically liners that are made to measure for your pond, this means there are no folds in the corners so it looks nicer. Not only that, they are very easy and quick to install. Because the pipework had to go though the back of the wall, this means we needed to install a tank liner connector with hosetails, securely sealed with pond grade mastic sealant.
Now this was all installed to finish off the feature we used a buff coloured Indian sandstone coping but to keep in theme with the large York Stone, the Indian stone used was 50mm thick.
What equipment was used?
We used a high quality rubber box weld pond liner to line the inside of the feature to make it water tight. In additional to this a heavy duty pond underlay was installed. With the water blade being 60cm in length we needed a pond pump of producing around 6000lph at the 1m head height. For this we chose to use a pump that is guaranteed to last and produce this flow rate without problems. The Oase Aquarius Universal 9000 was installed, this pump has a flow rate regulator so we could turn this down to get the customers desired effect. Once the LED strip light was fitted everything was complete ready for the customer to start enjoying the sound of relaxing running water again.
