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As I mentioned last time we felt that a sump would be required for the excess water that flows in the river and for evaporation. We could have put the sump pump in the pond but we were afraid that it would drain the pond very low every time we turned the waterfall and river on.
Since we are not going to run the waterfall and river all the time the "in transit" water would just go down the drain every time we shut it off and we would have to add lots of fresh water every time we turned it on. Our solution to this problem was to build an extra water storage sump downstream from the pond. The sump pump would sit in the tank and pump water up to the waterfall. The first thing we needed to do was figure out how big the tank should be. We calculated the amount of water for the pipe from the pump to the waterfall and added the amount of water we thought would be in the river at any given time. We also added a fudge factor just incase our numbers were a little bit off. Everything added up to a sump that would be 4' X 4' X 3' deep and hold 360 gallons of water. That sure seemed like plenty to us, so we went with it and dug our hole. We made forms, added rebar and poured concrete. We added an overflow feature to the back of the sump so that any excess water would have a place to go. After the cement was cured we installed our pump, hooked up the electrical and added the plumbing.  Next week we will discuss the plumbing but first the results of our sump effort. IT'S TOO SMALL!!! I'm not a hydro engineer and I guess it shows. Despite all our figuring the sump is too small and we have to add water to it every time we run the system. I believe the errors in our calculations were not allowing for the amount of restriction created by the rocks in the river and evaporation. When water flows through rocks it is backed up much more than just free flowing water. It adds up really quick so when sizing your sump be sure and take all of this into consideration so you are more successful that we were.
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