When you are choosing material to build a retaining wall in your yard or garden, there are many different choices on the market.
Wood retaining walls, like the ones we just finished in the picture to the right, are low cost and very sturdy.
For this retaining wall job in Scotts Valley, just outside of Santa Cruz, we used 6x6 posts with 2x12 boards. When building a wooden retaining wall make sure to always use pressure treated lumber.
Drainage is also a crucial part in the design and installation of a wood, or any type of, retaining wall construction.
Without drainage, the retaining wall could fail due to hydro-static pressure. Hydro-static pressure is caused by over saturation of water in the soils behind the retaining wall.
A French Drain in the best way to ensure proper drainage behind your wall. A French Drain is constructed using a perforated pipe behind the wall, at the base. The pipe is wrapped in filter fabric and back-filled with drain rock. Although you can't see it, we installed a French Drain behind each retaining wall in the construction of this project.
Another drainage system that we use in our retaining wall construction is called EZ-flow. This system uses perforated pipe wrapped in styrofoam and geo-textile fabric. It can hold more water than a traditional French Drain, and it much easier to install. We used the EZ-flow system on the wood retaining walls we just finished. EZ-flow is great for retaining wall projects with difficult access.
Here we are installing the 'fixed skimmer' that will connect to the waterfall tank. The skimmer allows us to create the 'vanishing waterfall' effect that makes the Filtrific system unique.
Just starting a new Waterfall project in Bonny Doon, outside Santa Cruz.
We are installing a Filtrific vanishing waterfall for this project.
Using the Filtrific system not only makes the installation easier, it makes the future maintenance much easier.
The tank in the picture is a 400 gallon waterfall filter tank. We will use this tank to house the pump, automatic fill valve, filtration and overflow. The tank is designed to allow for future additions to the system, such as, biological filtration, UV filtration and additional pumps.
The best part about the Filtrific system is, it allows us to create a 'vanishing pool'
effect using a fixed skimmer.
The skimmer draws debris from the waterfall into the filter tank, where it can be easily accessed.
Inside the tank there a two leaf catch basket filters. Any debris drawn in from the skimmer is caught here.
This system is a much needed improvement to the Pondless Waterfall industry.
In a traditional pondless waterfall, the pump is located in a 'pondless basin' at the bottom of the waterfall. The basin is constructed using 'Matrix Boxes' and various grades of gravel.
The waterfall looks the same, but functions differently. Any debris in the waterfall will be stuck at the top of the pondless basin. This makes maintenance difficult, and can result in pump failure and poor water quality.
We still install both types of features, but we feel that the Filtrific system is superior.
