Santa Cruz Landscaping: Boulder Creek Koi Pond #3

Well, we are finishing up this rather fun landscaping project in Boulder Creek, which is just outside Santa Cruz. At this project we are retrofitting a Koi pond and dressing up the existing landscaping.

Grouting the pathways

The new filtration is done, the pathways are done and the planting will be done tomorrow.

As with any pond retrofit or re-build, we have found some issues that need to be cared for:
First, we finally got all the new pumps and filtration installed. This included building a new deck and retaining wall to house the pumps and filters. We have two external pumps running, one for filtration and one for the waterfalls. When we finally turned on the waterfall pump we noticed that the existing falls was leaking drastically out the back! It looked like the builder of the waterfall did the installation rather well, so I was confused as to why it was leaking.

Fixing the waterfall

So, we decided to dismantle the upper part of the waterfalls to start the troubleshoot. We quickly found the issue....
a 6 inch hole in the liner that looked like it was chewed out by a gopher or a rat!!

This can usually mean that we would have to rebuild the whole waterfall. Luckily, we only had to fix the upper falls. We pulled out the rock and installed a new biological filter box and seamed the liner to that above the hole.
It is now flowing great and our client actually likes it more then the original waterfall!!!

Our client had one koi fish left from his original pond.
It had been living in a small tank for the past 3 weeks as we finished the retrofit. Yesterday we set the koi free and he seems to love his new home.


The filtration system is running well and we are all happy with the landscaping project so far. I  look forward to seeing the pond, koi , and plant life grow and mature over the years.

6 Light 240 watt UV filter with large Advanced Bead Filter