Four years ago, during the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal was baptized with his first Aquascape water feature. To say it was an honor and privilege to design and build a waterfall and pond for this amiable superstar is an extreme understatement.
It was also a little stressful and nerve wracking. Would Shaq love it? Would he be disappointed with the new water feature gracing the front of his large home? Much to my relief and excitement, Shaq was asking about a second project before we even finished the first one!
Doubling Down
that previously occupied the space.
Shaq envisioned a second, larger pond to be located between a grove of oak trees where a small, natural creek flowed from an underground spring adjacent to his driveway. His goal was to have that area excavated to create the desired shape and use the excavated soil to create a dam on the lower edge of the stream. This would allow the spring water to flood the open space, creating a large pond.
In my response to Mr. O’Neal, I advised that it’s not always that simple. I explained that just because you have a natural water source on the property doesn’t mean that the surrounding soil can effectively hold the water in place. You need to work with a soil engineer or install a rubber membrane to keep the water from seeping back into the ground. That was the extent of our discussion, and Shaq decided to stick with his original vision.
Fast forward three years, and I received a frantic phone call from Kenny, Shaq’s cousin and project manager. “Ed, the pond we built doesn’t hold water! We hired another guy to dig that pond by the oak trees,” he continued. “It took him six months to finish, but it only holds water after a heavy rain. After that, the water level drops 5 to 6 feet in a couple of days. Shaq is not happy right now! Can you help?”
After relaying the details of the call to Greg Wittstock, owner and CEO of Aquascape, he put me on the first flight to Atlanta to figure out what was happening.
The beginnings of the large pond fix
Being the eternal optimist that I am, I immediately told Kenny, “No problem, we can fix it!”
I arrived on site, and all I saw was a mess with wide, exposed shelves of mud!
A disconnected fountain aerator was shut down because it was sucking up sediment from the bottom of the pond. Then I saw a huge levee of soil that looked grossly out of place in the landscape. The water was so low that you couldn’t even see the surface from the driveway, which was one of Shaq’s main requirements.
But that’s not all. An evenly placed ring of rocks highlighted the mud-filled crater in the middle of the property!
This can be a dangerous proclamation, but I felt confident that it could be fixed if we were given full control over the entire repair. I returned to the office and started to create a plan of attack to not only repair this leaking pond, but also to create a water feature worthy of a basketball superstar!
The first challenge I had to overcome was dealing with the artesian spring that had bubbled up on the property. The irony of this was that the entire reason Shaq wanted the pond in the first place was because he wanted to see natural, flowing water 365 days a year. Little did he and Kenny know that the very thing they initially viewed as an asset for this project would later become its greatest liability!
The new design
After several iterations, I came up with a solution and new design layout that I shared with Wittstock for his approval and feedback. His first response was, “I love it.” He then added, “You need to add a putting green. Shaq loves games, and he’ll utilize the water feature more if we can make it interactive for him and his family.”
So, back to the drawing board I went to incorporate a series of putting greens into the design.
I can honestly say, the extra time and effort was worth it! Once the final concept with three putting greens was approved, we set the project in motion. This included sourcing and selecting the right mix of stone for the project, and we looked no further than Superior Irrigation and Landscape Supply. Due to the high-profile nature of our client, we went directly to the quarry to choose the proper mixture of stones for the project. We ended up with 300 tons of Tennessee boulders, 150 tons of mixed river rock, 60 tons of crushed stone for the base of the putting greens and 25 tons of beach sand.
Project logistics are always a critical component for a successful installation, and coordinating all deliveries, determining heavy equipment needed, and assembling an incredible team of Certified Aquascape Contractors to assist added to the list of challenges to overcome.
I had a plan for dealing with the artesian spring, but I knew from previous projects that we would probably need to modify the plan before things got easier. The first step was to drain the remaining water from the pond so we could remove the liquefied mud from the bottom. This turned out to be a larger task than anticipated!
Dewatering the Pond
Due to the nature of the sediment, it suffocated our pumps, as the water turned into a slurry of sand and clay that ended up clogging the piping system. We had to monitor the pumps and disconnect the piping periodically to clear the sediment from the pipe to insure optimal flow. We would make progress, and then while shutting down the pumps to maintain the pipe, the inflowing water would start refilling the pond, restarting the cycle all over again.
While we continued to dewater the site, we reshaped the pond by removing the levee installed along the back edge of the pond. The soil ridge was perfectly straight and parallel to the adjacent road, so removing it would completely change the dynamic of the property.
Lowering the water level in the feature worked better with the natural contours of the land and gave us more elevation for a waterfall. It’s an amazingly simple solution that eliminates multiple challenges while creating new opportunities.
As soon as we identified the main source of the spring, we installed a bypass drainage pipe to channel the incoming water away from the pond and into a downstream section of the watershed. This helped dramatically until we started removing the sediments manually. As the water level lowered, we drove our excavator into the pond to start removing the mud. During the removal process, we opened additional pathways for the groundwater to bubble up into the bottom of the pond!
Technical Foul
Luckily, the excavation company that dug the original pond left all the soil on site in a large stockpile on the back of the property. We had a truck and loader in the front yard removing the sediments, hauling them to the back of the property for disposal, and then loading up clean clay to put back in the pond to help create a solid base for the excavator to work from.
This went on for a couple of days as we cut and filled our way around the pond, and in the process, we added some shape and interest to the feature. The original circular pond became curvaceous, creating visual appeal and flow to the space.
The deepest section of the pond was a quagmire, which we could not fix. The solution was to remove as much of the mud as possible, and then start adding layers of geotextiles to span the softest zones. We covered the geotextile with clean soil, and another layer of geotextiles were added on top of the soil. Our team eventually worked our way out of the deepest section in a series of lifts until we achieved a workable subsoil.
For those of you who have dealt with similar situations, you know you’re not in the clear until the membrane is installed and many tons of ballast stone and gravel are placed on top of the membrane.
Project Staging
We staged all our materials and when the moment was right, working non-stop until we achieved our goal of having the custom fabricated polypropylene liner in place along with tons of rock and gravel to resist the hydrostatic pressure from heaving everything out of the ground. The power of water is unbelievable!
As we installed the rock and gravel, we started filling the deep section of the pond to add additional weight to the liner and force all the water into our drainage pipes and away from pond. Walking around on top of the liner covered with rocks that are literally floating on groundwater is an eerie feeling, as the entire feature quakes from the movement of heavy equipment operating around the perimeter. I was able to take a sigh of relief after we reached this benchmark.
a gorgeous pond with a wetland with a waterfall.
Business as Usual
The next steps were easy, in my opinion, because it was business as usual for the rest of the project —strapping and setting the beautiful Tennessee sandstone, building the 20-by-30-foot wetland filter to achieve the desired water quality, and installing the intake bay (prefilter) that would minimize the project maintenance procedures with a giant grid of AquaBlox to prefilter all of the incoming water.
Don’t get me wrong —there was still a ton of work to finish the large pond fix, but due to the efficient design of the pumping system and various discharge points, it made our job easier with more efficient functions! We minimized pumping runs by working with the new pond shape —a simple solution with huge returns.
Instead of using custom-sourced pumps, we utilized multiple Aquascape SLD adjustable-flow pond pumps to save on costs while giving us a lot of functional flexibility. The pumps can be programmed to operate independently or in unison to create different effects. The only pumps that needed to operate continuously were part of the wetland filtration system, which requires a constant flow of water to ensure optimal water distribution and dissolved oxygen levels to deliver the desired water quality. The additional pumps aid with water circulation (underwater jets) and with waterfall cascades, both of which do not need to operate for the health of the ecosystem.
Big results
I love the challenge of large projects, because they force you to take everything into consideration for them to function efficiently. It starts with the design process and continues throughout the project with logistics, heavy equipment operation, modular prefilters and wetlands that can be customized according to the project requirements.
Shaq was out of town during our reconstruction efforts, and we were anxious for him to see what we completed in two weeks (as opposed to the six months it took to construct the original 8-foot-deep pond). Kenny called Shaq and said he needed to come home to Atlanta for an emergency, but he didn’t specify any details.
When a bewildered Shaq stepped out of the SUV at his house, his expression told the story of how he felt about his new 175,000-gallon water feature that’s 110 feet long, 90 feet wide, and 5 ½ feet deep. We showed him the putting greens, the sandy beach, stepping stones across the narrowest section and the large wetland filter planted with pickerel weed, blue sedge, creeping Jenny, canna, thalia, a mix of iris and other marginal aquatics.
Shaq was blown away by the efficiency of our team and the transformation of a muddy eyesore into his efficiently functioning aquatic paradise — where he can also perfect his golf game!
