How to Build a NATURAL Looking waterfall (and tips n tricks on what NOT to do) 

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Yeah that property was beautiful!

:)

Thanks Jay!

Thanks Leslie! Appreciate all your comments 😊

Glad it helped!

Thanks for the support! Glad the videos are helpful! 👏💪

Thanks David! 👍 Yeah that was one massive frog! 😂

Thanks Matthew. Yeah, we all are on a journey, and we all start somewhere. And something like waterfall building falls in the artistic category, which means so much of it is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So for that reason, I try not to judge 😜 Regardless however, water feature should always be "functional". Not leak, etc. If you get that part right, the artistic side is: if you're happy with it, that's all that matters. Speaking of the artistic side, there are a few things that do make a water feature look better. (Again, subjective opinion here 😁) that even a brand new water fall builder with very little experience can benefit from. I should make a video on that someday. Building waterfalls well comes after you see it go together so many times that you begin to be able to visualize two and three boulders "ahead" of the one you are setting currently. Then that allows you to actually achieve what you had in your minds eye. What most new builders struggle with is being able to see ahead like that, and then when they can't, the final product doesn't quite turn out quite like they wanted

Woohoo toyspeed! Thats what this content is for ✌

😎😜😉

Thanks 😊

Thanks a lot Peter!

Thanks for the props Richard! Glad it was helpful!

Glad you got some value man! Yeah, depth and composition are huge in making a waterfall look natural

@@Tusseylandscaping I think they're blown it

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Thanks Steve!

Glad it was helpful!

Thanks Steve! We sure do. Great group of guys

😂😂 thanks Bryan! Always love your comments! Yeah this one was a fun job. Would it have been fun to do the whole thing? Absolutely. Did it look a lot better with just the stream rebuild? Sure did!

Thanks so much for watching!

Thanks so much! Yeah, it definitely is tough when you dont have much for rocks. I was happy how it turned out for the minimal rocks we had

Amen!

Awesome! Good luck man!

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Many thanks!

Thank you!

Hope you get it without delay with all the disruptions going on!

Yes hope so. We went to the academy in February. So I'm really excited to make a start.

Thank you very much!

Thank you! Appreciate the support!

Thanks Jaak! How's the dirt bike going?

I've never installed one of them, sorry!

Thank you!

🙌👊

Thank you Andrew!

Thanks!

Thanks! You too!

@@Tusseylandscaping I have to redo a waterfall in my backyard pond and I am looking for tips. 😁☮️

I have a video on how to build a natural looking waterfall somewhere s few months back. Check it out

@@Tusseylandscaping I will check it out. Thank you. 😁

Thanks! Yeah sure. The old skimmer had a slightly smaller opening than the new one did, so we just cleaned the liner really well, cut the opening slightly larger to fit the new skimmer, and siliconed and bolted it to the new skimmer with the faceplate. Yeah... things have got to be just right to rehab a pond and use the same liner. Can't always be done. In this case, the pond held water, so we were all good to go, and we used a new liner in the stream.

You bet! I was "Sharpening" the edge of the spillway rock so that the water going over the edge would break free form the rock easier and create the waterfall sheet look. If the spillway rock's edge is too rounded, the water never breaks off the rock and the surface tension just keeps the water stuck to theface of the rock as it drops down into the pond

thaaaaaaanxx :)

Thank you!

Thanks Quincy 😁 just takes a while to build up a channel. Patience is a virtue they say. Thanks for watching the videos 🙌🙏

Depends on the look you're going for, but most of the time I build with about 4,000-6,000 gph per foot of waterfall width. I like to build more crashing boulder style of waterfalls though. If you used a more artifical looking flat piece of flag stone for your waterfall rock, you could drop that down to about 2,000 gph per foot of width.

Thanks for the explanation! I think you are right. I've never used them before in water features.

It's actually a guillotine valve and is not to be used in any pressurized applications. You see these typically on drains, whirlpool tubs and spas, and sewage ejection pumps to isolate the pump.

😂🤷‍♂️ crazy crazy! We took care of it ;)

Good question. I don't know? Over 500 water features I would guess

14 years

Yep, just knocked off the rounded edge

@@Tusseylandscaping dude that's a great trick to pull out of your arsenal! I really like these videos you give installer tips on how to make these features more natural.

Yeah brother! 💪🙌

We absolutely have. Love using driftwood in our water features!

Tussey Landscaping please tell me about the use of drift wood and pictures please! How do you prevent it from rotting out within a couple of years

Basically just be intentional about how you use it, don't submerge it or have it be "structural" to the water feature. That way as it degenerates and rots, it's no big deal

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Yeah, can't get em all, but thankful we were able to do what we could here

Interesting! I didn't even know that. Thanks for watching :)

@@Tusseylandscaping this skimmer was 20 years ago.

Thank you! If you want a typical contained water feature, you must have a liner. The only exception would be working with a natural stream

I need a video guy! Come work for us!

Thanks John! I used the saw to knock off the "rounded"edge of that spillway stone. I ground that edge with the saw blade, Ava created a sharper edge, which mage the water break free easier. The other alternative would have been to put in a bigger pump, and with the additional water flow, it could have broken the surface tension of the water on that rounded edge of the spillway stone, and broken into a clean water fall sheet. In this case, grinding it allowed us to make the water break free into that sheet water fall without adding more water flow. The sharper the spillway stones corner is, the less water it takes break free into a sheet.

A little hard to follow what your trying to achieve, but an overlap needs to be done with the upper liner from the stream bibbing down over the lower liner in the pond. The stream liner on top of the pond liner

​@@Tusseylandscaping making the pond larger but don't want to have to rebuild the waterfall that is why I want to use a bib liner on the water fall

Sorry, I can't read that :(

Sounds like you're ready to build! I would use a felt underlayment before liner even if the soil is good.

Thanks!

Was creating a sharper edge or lip on that spillway rock so that the water would break off and create a sheet, rather than stick to the rock and run down the face.

@@Tusseylandscaping haha fair enough mate

🤷‍♂️ Gotta stop somewhere right?

I wondered too. I could be wrong, but I think the goal was to get a sheet over the rock. Before he took the saw to it, the water was clinging to the rock. Before ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-U4U4Rf6sVDM.html After ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-U4U4Rf6sVDM.html I wish that he would have explained that.

Yes, this is the reason, to manipulate the sheet and get it to break free from the rock edge

​@@Tusseylandscaping Thank you for the up vote. What exactly did you do with the saw to get the water to sheet?

Thanks for watching,Adam!

Hey neighbor! 😁 Yes, the rule of thumb we use is a waterfall will evaporate about .5 to 1% of it's water flow in 24 hours. So if you have a stream with 5,000 gph of flow, you could lose up to 50 gallons of water in a day.

Tussey Landscaping thank you! Yea this is a pond has two bio areas, we don’t have them running since the water level is below the skimmer flow level. We just built it and filled it up about a month ago first pond 😗. I was thinking things were settling so that might be a reason for water level dropping too. Since first pond just watching some of your helpful tips. Also making our first bog pond too. Are you located in Altoona?

Our address is Hollidaysburg. But we work up in State college. Let us know if you need anything from us

It’s the guy who did the original install. He got lost looking for the bottom drain valve

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Awesome! Post your photos on IG and tag Tussey

Yes

To make a sharper edge on the spillway stone, so the water breaks into a clean sheet

It was about 1,500

Ha ha ha 😂 when you put it that way.... yeah not so cool eh? We protected the yard with plywood throughout the job. When we left we didnt have to do any reseeding, it all looked great

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Baldur's are a problem lol

I know right! 🤔😂

I wouldn't know the answer to that question. Ed the Pond Professor would likely know

Not saying we should kill our planet but there's more habitable planets ya know

@@Tusseylandscaping My experience is that most US-Americans don't care about the enviroment. It's always convenience over nature. If it is "normal" foam, it's hazardous waste. That's why I'm asking.

@@O.B.E.A.S.T.T. Yeah, just around the corner. A short trip some hundred years. But let our children deal with it in the future. Devil-may-care.

Ha! We love what we do!

We're from central PA, we make words up as we go 😂 thanks man

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What seemed incorrectly done to you?

Tussy did incredibly on this job! I don’t know how you could think that

Acting the Pratt? Also the fish were in the same temp water as the pond, so there was no reason to float them