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Water Feature Mayhem Over Here! Help!
I lurk here and I was wondering if any of you regulars have some advice about water features.
DH and I just bought a home. The previous owners spent big bucks doing land and hard scaping in the back yard. Part of this is a huge water feature, which has four pools varying in size from approximately 4'x4' to 8'x16', all connected by waterfalls and rocks.
What do we use to cover this in fall? It's in a forest setting so leaves will be an issue. Also, it appears that there is some sort of thin green netting under water on top of the rocks. Any idea what this is?
Lastly, the largest pool is probably 4' deep at it's lowest point. The pool is in 100% shade, but the base and edges of the pool look brown/black when the sun light does peak through the trees. Is there any safe way we can clean them up so the boulders show more and look not yucky? Not sure if this matters, but the old owners had koi in the deepest/largest pool. Side note: the koi were all eaten by some sort of wild critter - yuck!
Re: Water Feature Mayhem Over Here! Help!
I don't have a water feature myself...but I work at an office that has a waterfall/small pool/rock edged. In the fall I think they drain it, and then they put a tarp over it and put rocks all along the edges of the tarp. I might try and do this before a TON of leaves fall into it, which would clog it for next year and would get pretty gross over the year.
As far as cleaning goes - I'd probably scrub the pool out with a brush in the spring. For keeping it clear as possible, I'd keep the water moving as much as possible (waterfalls on) and maybe add a little bit of pool chemical to keep the algae at bay.
Depends partially on where you are located as far as whether or not you need to drain the pools for winter. Here in western NY, we don't drain our pond (also about 4' deep), but we do turn the falls off. We don't cover in the fall, but instead use a pool skimmer to skim the leaves off as they fall. They do make covers for ponds like they do pool covers. My guess is the green net in the bottom is for picking uyp and removing the leaves that do fall to the bottom.
For cleaning, we like the granular product called algeaway. A big part of keeping the algea in water features under control is regular maintenance. Also, you may want to consider getting more koi...they eat the algea!
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