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INDOOR WATERGARDEN, PONDS & WATERFALLS
( How to build and maintain your dream pond indoor . )
3 Benefits Indoor Water Gardens:
Water gardens can be found in suburban, city and rural communities, but are they for aesthetics or function? Long before water gardening became popular for raising fancy koi or ornate goldfish, they were used for function. Including a water feature in a courtyard garden or within the typical framework of a home has been practiced by landscapers and engineers for centuries.
During the recent batch of extreme heat and temperatures rising well into the 90s, I watched my neighbor use the water from his garden hose to cool the air entering his house. He took advantage of his front door facing west and western winds by anchoring his garden hose to a column of his house with a rope so that the water sprayed just past the first step of his front door. Water cooled the air entering his home, giving him an alternative to the constant drone of an air conditioner and spinning electric meter. I sighed and wondered why I hadn't thought of that first.
3 Benefits of an Indoor Water Garden:
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Adds humidity to a home in the cold, dry winter
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Helps keep a home cool in the summer
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Brings the beauty of nature into a home
Indoor water features can be built using the same materials as koi ponds, garden ponds or even Formal Falls features.
Videos :
Beautiful Indoor Pond
Indian Balcony Makeover DIY on a Budget I Balcony Pond I Balcony Decorating Ideas India I ASK IOSIS
Cool DIY small Indoor Pond for less than 100$ with Goldfish
Indoor Ponds and Waterfalls
courtesy to : www.onlinetips.org/indoor-ponds-and-waterfalls/
Photo by David Morris, Creative Commons Attribution License
5 LESSONS LEARNED BUILDING AN INDOOR WATER FEATURE
courtesy to : lochnesswatergardens.com/blogs/pondblog/5-lessons-learned-building-an-indoor-water-feature
Posted by Bill Dubert
Our pond was not this cool. This is in Berlin
Gather round children, and I’ll tell you a tale with not just one, but five morals. It was several a few* years ago, shortly after I graduated from college. I was living in a pretty large apartment with a couple of friends, a place that, well, let’s be generous and say that it had a lot of character. We decided, obviously, that we needed to build an indoor water feature. Not a little zen water trickler, but a full-on pond. Upstairs. I had a little bit of experience in the area, having built a few ponds before, so I was pretty confident that I knew essentially what I was doing. Which is, of course, exactly why my roommates decided to build the thing while I was out of town. I can’t really blame them. When I came home, I discovered what was essentially a plywood box full of rocks and pond, which is when I learned the first lesson:
1. It can be done with little to no expertise.
I’m not going to say that my roommate was an idiot, but only because he might read this. Idiot or not, though, with a small, inexpensive kit, a little research on the internet, and a few bucks worth of various materials from a local hardware store, he and another buddy managed to put together a fully functional and surprisingly attractive water feature, indoors, in just a few hours. I was astonished. There was a waterfall. There were plants. There were fish. The whole thing worked with no leaks and looked fantastic.
In fact, it looked so great that we decided that we wanted to move it to a place where it would be closer to the center of activity in the room. That’s when we discovered that
2. Once in place, it will not move.
Water is heavy. Like, really heavy. A gallon of water weighs more than eight pounds, but you probably know that. It’s hard to turn that knowledge, though, into the useful realization that you and your college buddies are probably not going to be able to drag a pond full of water across the room. Especially when you factor in the weight of the wood and veneer and the heavy substrate that the pond was built in (we used large gravel). We could have drained the pond and taken it out of the substrate and moved the whole thing piece by piece, but that would have essentially meant starting over, and we were fairly sure that it would end with leaks in the pump or hoses or something. So, the pond stayed right where it was. Which was actually good in the end, because it wasn’t near anything important, and was on tile near a floor drain (again, a very classy apartment). Moving the thing would have led to a much less pleasant learning of lesson number 3.
3. Don’t underestimate the spray.
A pond with a waterfall sprays everything around it. It doesn’t seem like much, just a droplet here or there, but that adds up, and quickly. You’ll want to take this into account with every decision you make in building the pond. What’s near it, what plants you choose, what type of floor it can be on and how that floor is treated prior to installation, what substrate you use, even what the wall coverings are. You’ll need to clean the area regularly to prevent mildew. You’ll also want to keep your caulk ready to go. Your caulk is your friend with an indoor pond. Speaking of new friends, the caulk gun and fish might not be the only friends you make with the indoor pond. You’ll also need toAlso not our pond, though we were this ridiculous around it, easily. (credit)
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4. Watch the Windows
We loved our goldfish that we had in the pond. That’s why we were so sad when the first one disappeared. Sad and a little confused, but we figured we were just missing something. However, after losing about two fish a week mysteriously for a little less than a month, we were seriously wigging out. It wasn’t until early one morning when I came out to water the few plants that were outside of the spray zone that I figured it out. I walked in, and a big bird looked up at me with about as guilty an expression as a bird can have. Then, I swear on my oldest koi’s life, that bird shrugged at me and flew out the open window. Mystery solved, though not without losing several fish and getting a kinda funny new story to tell at parties.
5. Everybody loves an indoor pond.
We were recently out of college, we had a sweet, huge, kind of trashy apartment, and we were dumb guys. So, yeah, we threw a lot of parties. You know the one thing that never got broken in our place? The pond. Everyone went nuts over the thing and would ask us tons of questions about it. People were deeply impressed and, until now, we never admitted just how easy it had been to build.
*Let me have my soothing delusions about how long it’s been, thank you very much.
The design and size of indoor ponds and waterfalls that you could install in your home or office, are only limited by your imagination and, of course, the space you have to fit them into.
There is something soothing about having an indoor pond especially if there’s the sound of running water with it from a waterfall, or perhaps even just an indoor waterfall on its own. Adding lighting effects to an indoor pond or waterfall, will transform it at night into a spectacular feature too.
In Confined Spaces
If you are limited for indoor space then one of the variously sized natural or sculptured and glazed boulders with a small shallow waterfall from its center can be very effective. Alternatively you can get small multi-level troughs with waterfalls tumbling down them, in a variety of designs and materials.
Particularly effective at an entrance is to have a sculptured human or animal form, often based on classical mythology, that incorporates either a waterfall or possibly a shallow fountain. Within a limited space a pond could be so small as to make it lose the effect you were seeking to create, so unless you can install an indoor pond that covers at least 6 square feet – you’ll achieve a much more impressive effect with an indoor waterfall.
Larger Indoor Ponds
Whilst an Indoor pond can be sunk into the floor of a building it is more usual to build the pond on top of a floor. Any suitable pond building material can be used so, depending on your DIY skills, you could mold your own fiberglass pond, construct a brick or wooden frame into which you fit a pond liner, or if your floor is strong enough make a concrete pond indoors.
However, the simplest way to create an indoor pond will be to build a wooden frame and fit a pre-cast plastic pond, from your DIY store or water features store, into it. If you choose this method make sure the pond is adequately supported where it doesn’t rest against the frame or the floor. To finish the indoor pond you can fit side panels in wood, plastic or faux stone-work to the sides of the frame.
However, the simplest way to create an indoor pond will be to build a wooden frame and fit a pre-cast plastic pond, from your DIY store or water features store, into it. If you choose this method make sure the pond is adequately supported where it doesn’t rest against the frame or the floor. To finish the indoor pond you can fit side panels in wood, plastic or faux stone-work to the sides of the frame.