Pondless Water Features

January 12th, 2013

   Don and Cheryl Snyder wanted a water feature for a back corner of their New Cumberland yard, but they didn’t have much space, and they weren’t too crazy about the maintenance that goes with fish.

Sherry Shumaker’s pondless water feature. The water seems to disappear into the stone bed.

   Sherry Shumaker of Silver Spring Twp. also wanted a water feature for along her front walkway, but she had safety concerns about when her little granddaughter would visit. Shumaker didn’t want the hassle of fish gunk and algae-filled green water either.   The solution for both: a pondless water feature.

   A what?

   “That’s what everybody says when I tell them I have a pondless waterfall,” says Don Snyder. “They have a hard time understanding how you can have a waterfall without a pond.”

   It not only IS possible, but it’s a hot trend in water gardening.

   “It’s a pretty simple concept,” says Joe Lelii, a West Hanover Twp. landscape contractor who installed Shumaker’s pondless water feature. “Basically, you bury a vault in the ground, install a pump, fill it up with rocks and cover the top with a layer of stones.”

   Water from the waterfall drops into the stone bed and magically disappears into the stones – to be recirculated through a hidden hose back up to the top of the falls.

   The buried vault is typically 3 to 6 feet in size, depending on the size of the waterfall. Most are roughly the size of a 55-gallon drum and topped with heavy screen or reinforced netting underneath the surface stone layer.

   That means you can even walk right over top of the drainage area without falling into anything.

A diagram by Aquascape Designs shows what’s underneath.
www.aquascapeinc.com/pondlesswaterfalls

   “Some people like the plants and the fish,” says Greg Black, whose Upper Allen Twp. Black Landscape Contracting firm has installed several pondless water features. “But for most people, it’s the sound that attracts them most… This way you have the sound and the visibility of moving water, but instead of it draining into a pond, the water goes down into a buried pit that recycles the water with a pump.”   “It’s extremely and almost no maintenance,” says Dustin Stohler, whose Myerstown-based DreamScapes Watergardens installed the Snyders’ pondless feature. “That’s the major benefit. If you get even an occasional rain, you never even have to fill it.”

   For the Snyders, the pondless option allowed them to tuck a 2-foot-tall waterfall into a tight, fenced-in corner that’s no more than a 6-by-6-foot triangle.

   Because they needed no big hole for a pond, they could allocate most of the limited space to the waterfall.

   They even added a narrow stream that runs 18 feet between their side fence and their pool deck. It empties into the same buried pit as the falls.

   “The hose splits off in two directions,” explains Snyder. “One branch feeds the stream, and the other feeds the waterfall.”

   The Snyders had been leaning toward a fountain before they saw the pondless idea at the Pennsylvania Home Show.

   “We’re beach people, and we both like the sound of water,” Snyder says. “We wanted a place where we could come back and relax, but we didn’t want to get into fish. I grew up with aquariums and know that fish are work. This was ideal. It’s been very stress-less.”

   Shumaker says she prefers her new double-drop pondless waterfall to the standard waterfall and pond she’s had for five years.

   “I got rid of the fish in that one,” she says. “They were always dirtying the pond. This one is awesome. It’s bigger and more picturesque. It’s a lot less maintenance. I never get algae. Maybe once a month I top it off (with water) in hot, dry weather, and that’s about it.”

   Shumaker’s pondless water feature is situated under a big shade tree – a nice spot but one that also means gobs of leaves dropping into the water in a standard pond.

   In her case, though, it’s quick and easy to just rake leaves off the 2-by-4-foot oval stone drainage bed. The leaves can’t drop into the water, then decay and contribute to the gooey gunk that requires pond-owners to drain their ponds and clean the bottom every year or two.

   In most cases, pondless maintenance amounts to little more than cleaning the filter and removing the pump at season’s end.

   Shumaker even lets her pondless feature run all winter.

   “It’s so pretty in the winter with the icicles,” she says.

   Then there’s the occasional top-off of water in hot weather.

   “You’re really not even using that much water,” says Lelii. “You just need enough to supply the waterfall.”

   “You have all the benefits of having a pond but without the maintenance,” says Stohler.

   Less maintenance and the limited space needed aren’t the only attractions, though.

   “They’re especially popular at commercial sites because you can have the water noises without the liability of open water,” says Black.

   Stohler says they’re also ideal for people who travel a lot and for those with young children or grandchildren.

   Then there’s the issue of mosquitoes. Even though mosquitoes are seldom a threat in a fish-stocked pond fed by a waterfall (mosquito eggs are a favorite fish meal), a pondless feature eliminates the threat because there is no standing water.

   That was another selling point for Snyder.

   “Bugs love me,” he says. “I didn’t want something that was going to attract mosquitoes.”

   Landscapers and water-gardening experts see pondless features as a popular new option. But for all of their benefits, they’re not for everyone.

   A key drawback for some is that there are no fish – often one of the attractions of water gardening.

   And there are no aquatic plants either.

   So for someone who wants the whole package and not just the moving water, a pondless feature isn’t the same as a water garden.

   “Waterfalls are neat, but fish become like pets to a lot of people,” says Stohler.