When choosing a veneer stone for your retaining wall or other masonry work, be sure to look at your options to make sure you are geting the look and feel you desire for your landscape.
There are many types of Faux Veneer Stone products to choose from.
ElDorado Stone and Cultured Stone make some beautiful products.
Faux veneer stone is a lightweight concrete product that is cast into a variety of shapes and colors that mimic actual stone almost identically. Faux stone is easy to work with and can be installed much faster than natural stone veneer.
However, there is nothing that compares to the beauty and color of Natural Stone Veneer.
The project featured here was constructed using a Natural Stone Veneer.
We used Wolk Creek and Autumn Flame stones for this wall.
Stones are carefully selected and cut into place to create a one of a kind piece of functional art.
Natural Veneer Stone is slightly harder to work with because of its weight and its density, which makes it harder to cut.
Natural stone can be more expensive than faux stone, depending on the stone you choose to work with.
This project called for a 'Dry Stack' look. This means there are no grout joints between the stones. The result is a more naturalistic feature.
After all the stone is mortared to the wall, we cap it with a bull-nosed cap stone and seal the entire wall with a semi-gloss laquer finish.
Here is a Vanishing Waterfall we are finishing for our client in Bonny Doon, in the hills above Santa Cruz.
The waterfall was the first phase of this project. In the spring, we will be finishing the rest of the landscape. A flagstone patio, outdoor shower, Mexican tile entryway, native plantings and landscape lighting will accent the the area around the water feature.
Check back in with us next spring for photos and videos of the completed project.
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.
This is a residential backyard landscape we have been working on this month.
The picture on the left is during construction of the Vanishing Waterfall.
Notice the clock on the fence. We found it buried in the dirt during excavation.
This project was designed by Jan Nelson.
Jan referred us to her client for this project.
This project features a well selected list of plants, a Filtrific Vanishing Waterfall, an artificial turf lawn and some basic landscape lighting.
