A lot of builders have been in the industry for many years with a broad spectrum of completed projects under our belts. This process has us performing consultations to formulate conceptual designs. Once the design is completed, we move on to a proposal. From there, it’s off to construction and finally project completion. Once completed, that process restarts all over again as we move on down the road to the next client.
The cyclical process contractors go through is engrained into us and really is part of our daily work life. We are always working on a project or consulting with a potential new client, though sometimes that phone will ring, and up pops the name and number from a previous build from years past. Those calls can sometimes make your mind race ten different ways. You speculate about what the call is about before you even hit that green button. My favorite is when the client on the other end of the line starts with, “I’ve been thinking …” or, “We were wondering about another waterscape.”
Haywood Community College Pond Renovation
Haywood Community College is located in Western North Carolina at the base of the Smokey Mountains. In 2022, we were called in to help with water-quality issues on a 50-year-old earthen pond. We designed an aeration installation along with a treatment program that increased water quality and pond health. The school now was reaching out for help to improve the functionality and health of two recirculating liner ponds. Constructed by staff and students, the two ponds were built around 25 years ago. They are located right in the center of campus, just outside the library.
According to the director of the school, the two systems have had issues since construction. They were not utilizing any mechanical or biological filtration for water quality. The two ponds had several low edges and holes in the liner. Autofills were constantly running to keep the ponds at an optimal level. The hill below the ponds was chronically wet. The concrete slabs surrounding the buildings suffered from the freeze thaw cycle of a wet subgrade. If it could go wrong on a pond, it did on these two.
Deconstruction begins on waterfall rebuilds
Once we consulted with the school, they approved our design, and we secured the rebuild. We were headed back to the school. To keep the site as tidy as possible with student traffic, we decided to build one pond at a time. Once the deconstruction commenced on the ponds, it started to feel like an archeological excavation site. We began finding brick walls, block walls, rigid plastic, concrete, carpet and wood. I think the staff used anything they had lying around during construction. In fact, we believe the stones were from the expansion of the local highway when the Department of Transportation dynamited the mountain. We found several stones with bore holes and even found blasting wire still going through one hole on a large slab stone.
This contract called for us to use the existing stone for the rebuilding. We made sure to locate the removals for all existing wires. These ponds had almost vertical waterfalls, and the substrate was composed of what seemed like a pile of quarry spoils. The current falls design led to some excessive splashing, which exacerbated the water loss issue. We remediated this by shortening the height slightly and rebuilding the falls with a design that was more a cascade than a sheer fall. It was quite tricky building on top of a stone substrate. It felt like playing Jenga when we removed any material!
Equipment for a waterfall rebuilds
We utilized Atlantic-Oase 19-inch Pro Series Fast Falls for both waterfalls. These units have a great molded support cone system that provides impressive structural integrity for placing larger stones slabs upon the units. The ponds are in an island of soil surrounded by concrete slabs. This limited our ability to increase the pond dimensions, although we were able to increase depth and width on both features. We installed two Atlantic-Oase Pro Series 7000 skimmers, which have a super flow weir door that really maximizes skimming efficiency for these commercial features.
Filter Technology
Because we had a very difficult footprint and limited space, we chose not to try and squeeze in any filter falls. It would have reduced our waterfall real estate and made for a difficult concealment. We opted to utilize Atlantic-Oase mechanical and biological Filtoclear technology. We used two Filtoclear 8000 units, which are so easy when it comes to maintenance and always great in a commercial application. The college staff can backflush these units in minutes with the easy clean technology Atlantic-Oase has patented with their Filtoclear filters. The compact size, easy burial and high filtration accompanied with UV clarification made these units a no-brainer for this installation. We concealed these units at the top of the waterfall mound, which helped reduce the chances of tampering.
This was a fun project that was completed with a daily audience of students and professors. We had constant engagement and praises, which really moved my guys to create two really nice features. The director of the college was so pleased that they are having a ribbon-cutting ceremony in August for the reconstruction of the two features. It’s always great when you go from consultation to construction to completion and have nothing but praises. It’s even better when you get that call back for another project.
Side note: the school reached out for a third project, which Liquid Landscapes has already completed at the time of this article.
About the Author
Benjamin Timmermans, president and lead designer of Liquid Landscapes Incorporated, creates aquatic environments that captivate and extend the senses. With a degree in recreation and wildlife management led him to a passion for aquatic ecology as well as his fascination with the balance of natural ecosystems