Building A Stream For Homeowner’s To Love In Ankeny And Ottumwa
Building Streams For Clients To Relax Beside And Love In Ankeny And Ottumwa, Iowa
You can read about 2 different stream building projects clients hired us to do for them in Ankeny and Ottumwa. The first project on this page is for clients in Ankeny, Iowa who were referred to us by a landscaper. They wanted to have a water feature installed in their backyard as part of a home improvement project. The couple came to us with a design in mind and trusted us to make it happen for them.
Watch the video further down to see what they had us do.
Skip to the Ottumwa Project
A Little Trust Can Go A Long Way
“I think we can trust our landscaper’s referral.”
James is trying to tell Amy that the pond contractor they’re about to call is worth calling. She isn’t too sure about it. She’d rather the landscaper they’re working with handle the whole project.
James knows better. One of his friends let a general landscaper build them a water feature and it didn’t turn out well. They actually ended up hiring a pond contractor to fix it! James doesn’t want that to be his story so he’s definitely on board with hiring this pond contractor.
James talks to Amy about all this and manages to soothe her worries. They contact Just Add Water, the pond contractor they’ve been referred to.
Building A Disappearing Stream In Ankeny
James and Amy talk to Just Add Water about their project. They ask and answer questions about their project and tell them about the ideas they have for their stream.
Just Add Water says they can help. They draw up a contract with James and Amy and get to work. Here’s a short video on the project:
How Do They Like It?
Direct review: “Big shout to Will, Chris and the gang for our backyard transformation! It looks awesome and we love it! Fantastic job done by a great bunch of guys!”
Building A Beautiful Stream For A Pond In Ottumwa, Iowa
This stream building project happened in Ottumwa, Iowa. You can read the whole story right here:
So of course we had to ask about it, being pond nerds and all. We started shooting ideas back and forth with the client for how they could make it look nicer. They decided that a stream would take it to the next level. Our client then decided to hire Just Add Water to build a stream for their retention pond.
Let’s see the process it took to make this transformation happen.
A Little Bit About The Project
We don’t mind that it is a fair distance away, we go just about anywhere in Iowa to give someone an amazing water feature they’ll love. Staying in a hotel for a week is kind of fun anyways.
Building a stream for this client is no exception.
The location for the stream is about 300 feet away from the house. The client wants to be able to hear it from their house, so we’re going to have to make it a big stream.
That’s why we we’re making it 60 feet long and 40 feet at its widest with two pumps that pump 25,000 gallons per hour each. This will make it the focal point they want. We talk to the client to determine their wants and needs, discuss design and options, and make sure everyone is on the same page.
Now it’s time to start building a stream.
Time To Start Building A Stream
You can tell from the previous section that this project will take a lot of time, manpower, and large equipment. Just look at the area we’re digging out here:
It took a while, but we finally got the area dug out and ready for the next step. Speaking of the next few steps, we’re bringing in some experts to help us knock it out of the park for our client, including Ed Beaulieu from Aquascape (the big daddy of ponds).
Let’s start the building process by laying down some liner.
Laying Down The Underlayment
You don’t want water going where it isn’t supposed to, it can make things soggy and complicated. That’s why we install an underlayment under the liner to make sure the water stays in the stream bed:
It’s going to take a lot of underlayment and liner to cover the whole stream bed, but we’ll manage. Now comes the hardest part: rocking out the bottom.
Rocking Out The Stream Bed
We try to have some fun building water features, but it’s still nothing like rocking out at a concert! Unless you love water features as much as we do.
Rocking out involves laying down gravel and rocks to protect the liner and provide a natural look. You wouldn’t want to look into a stream and just see a black liner bottom, right?
Our client would rather see this:
The larger rocks help channel the water and also provide a cascading effect to make the sound of splashing water. With this setup, once we turn it on it’s going to sound beautiful (and we can’t wait to hear it!)
Once the rocking is done, we need to hook up the plumbing.
Hooking Up The Plumbing For The Stream
Sadly, We Have To Wait Now
We finish the stream and it is amazing!
The only problem is, we can’t turn it on yet. The pond itself is not yet full enough for us to be able to run the pumps without wasting a lot of water. It was on our minds all winter long as we had to wait to see what our client thinks of it.
Love At First Sight
We came back as soon as spring hit and turned that stream on. Our client loves it, especially after having Perennial Gardens come in and do the landscaping around it:
They are still happy with their stream (and the pond we originally came to fix) and that makes us happy. Our client ran the waterfall all of winter 2018 and it works like a dream.
Here is how you can care for your water feature during winter >>
