Advice sought.
Master bath: double vanity, shower, jacuzzi tub, da da da…….
How about a faux/cultured stone waterfall by the tub?
Purpose of waterfall: aestethics and sound.
How to make it look and sound “real”?
What I really need: plans/advice, … to avoid “re-inventing the wheel.”
From building boxes and fitting face frames to installing doors and drawers, these techniques could be used for lots of cabinet projects.
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Replies
Two concerns would be avoiding mold build-up along the rock and preventing grit from the rock scratching the tub base. Had a desktop rock waterfall thingy with a small pump, and the growth of mold along the edges of the water trail was amazing...Louis Pasteur would have been proud.
Cool idea, but a potential maintenance headache.
Glad you brought this up. My clients think they want a "water feature" in the master br to help mask the noise of the a/c units outside the window.
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
"Real" is intended to mean as "realistic as possible", hence the faux rocks/cultured stone. I am not intending the waterfall water to mix with the tub water. I envision a totally self-contained, recirculating water reservoir. Someone must be building similar type things for high-end homes. This is my house. My master bath. Experimental yes. Risky sure. Interior Alaska. Winter-time. The gentle sound of running, gurgling water:
Priceless.
Okay I will take a stab at this since I have built a couple of outside waterfalls for koi ponds.
If you were doing this outside you would first build up the base structure of the water fall into vaguely the shape you were going for. The waterfall should have steps. You don't get that good waterfall splashing sound if the water is just falling vertically. A wider fall of water looks better than a thinner fall. You could also add rocks to the fall to help break up the laminer flow of water.
I would frame up the waterfall area like you were going to tile it but the question is in how to waterproof the thing. I would use EPDM pondliner. You can probably glue it to the cement backer board. Make sure its one big continuous piece from top to bottom and the sides. You will have to have raised outer edges on the falls to keep the water contained-make sure the pond liner goes underneath the edges and up a bit-maybe hide the liner with a bit of trim.
Once the liner-plumbing is in place then just set the 'rocks' in a thick bed of mortar right on top of the liner. It won't go anywhere. This is how the edges of my pond are done and those rocks don't move unless you hit them with a sledge (don't ask me how I know).
Getting the flow of water just right is tough. It takes more water than you think to get a good looking fall. In the picture that's about 3000gph going over that fall. I don't know if you can eliminate the natural water splatter that happens.
An interior waterfall would be a neat way to add moisture to the air during the heating season. I have two tropical fishtanks and they keep the air reasonably humid.
Well this reply was a bit more stream-of-consciousness than I had intended-hope this helps.
Daniel Neuman
Oakland CA
Crazy Home Owner
Sounds like a lot of work for an interior water feature. I wonder if the poster would be happy with one of those vertical water features. I have seen them made of pounded copper or other metals. I have also seen them made of tile or slate. I idea is to have a wall of the material of your choice and have a sheet of water wash down the whole thing.
I would think you might be able to build little ledges into the wall to add interest and a bit of splash. Maybe you could have the wall drop down behind the tub (leave the tub . . . say . . . two inches away from the wall. You would likely need access to the wall from behind for maint.
One nice thng about a wall would be that it would not take up much space.
Toss a little bleach in the recirculating water. No mold. Of course, something like that in my house would have me needing to pee constantly....Andy
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Thanks for all the input and suggestions. My intent is fairly humble: approx. 4' wide by 6' tall. Moisture is a huge concern. While we have an HRV system, all that water
(even if not running there will be an open reservoir of water) can not be good. How to best calculate pump size and supply line diameter? Is a variable output pump realistic? Since I have no experience building a waterfall, and since building a demo is unrealistic, I would like to build into the system some variation. For example, if flow is wrong, a way to increase or decrease the flow. My current idea: build a manifold with "parallel" valves and supply lines to various locations on the wall. This would theoretically allow control over flow/output. Still not 100% ready to pull the trigger, but this is my wife's dream. Gotta support dreams.
For your small waterfall I don't think you should need to go the fancy route that made sense for the interior koi pond. I would set it up like doing a tile job. Go to a real rock place (not a big box store) and see what they got. Use some sort of thin slate or something. Then do the pond liner ( I don't know how else to absolutley gaurrentee that it won't leak) and mortar the natural stone to it. You can color the morter to match the stone-there would be no need to grout something like this.
There is no such thing as a variable output pump (ASAIK) you just plumb a full port ball valve inline (on the pressure side) and control the flow that way.
Have a large hidden rectangular tank at the bottom as your resivior and have a smaller rectangular tank up top (hidden) as your header resivior. You can make one side of your header resivior lower and the water will uniformly spill out or you can drill holes where you want the water to come out and experiment with placement and size..not easy to undo an incorrectly placed hole though.
If you want a 4' wide sheet of water like 1/2" deep you can probalby use a small submersible ~1200gph pump. As for tubing size use the biggest that will fit easily. You can use 1" pvc (as a min) probably but I would use bigger if it would fit.
Daniel Neuman
Oakland CA
Crazy Home Owner
Did a Google for "indoor waterfalls" and only got 727,000 results. Some of them are pretty cool. Don't want to reinvent the wheel? Buy one; pass the liability off to the supplier.Bruce
Between the mountains and the desert ...
I had a homeowner import a bunch of north carolina mountain stone -- specifying 'heavy on the lichen'
they built a realistic looking wall about ten feet tall and let the water flow so that it appeared to be filling a giant jacuzzi. I think it actually recirculated through a different system -- so as to not cross contaminate. I don't think chlorine is good for lichen. nor is fungus good for the skin.
it looked and sounded great
" My clients think they want a "water feature" in the master br to help mask the noise of the a/c units outside the window."
I used to have a water feature that masked such noises. Then I just jiggle the handle a little and the pleasant hum of the a/c is audible once more. ;)
>> How to make it look and sound "real"?
An indoor waterfall? "Real?"
Just build some boxes and cover them with wall paper with a stone design and maybe use some pergo flooring, or, better, some vinyl with an oak print. Glue some big balls of cotton to the ceiling
<G>
You will never make it look real, so why fight it?
Put your energy and creativity into making it look "cool" or whatever.
"Real" just ain't in the picture, regardless of what the Skin Horse in the "Velveteen Rabbit" says.
You have to put chemicals in the water for sure to minimize the growies.
Another thing that concerns me is the moisture control especially you are in a cold climate.
High maintainance too that's why I quit keeping an aquarium a long time ago.
I worked on a house where the hot tub was surounded by a man made stream, made it look like a pool in thr stream .. way cool. How about a under mount tub ,waterfall, recirc pump etc... shasam
Tim
We've built a couple of realistic indoor water features. This one is koi pond on the second floor of a garage addition.
The photo below is of the preliminary framing
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The photo below is of the room once the "rockwork" was completed. Most of the rockwork is Structo-lite & Hydrocal plaster over metal lathe and styrofoam forms except where the stream and waterfall are. The stream and waterfall sections we surfaced in fiberglass reinforced surface bonding cement.The stream starts on the top of that pile of rock on the right and then comes down to in front of the circular window and then switches back to empty into the pond basin and while the fiberglass reinforced surface bonding cement is water resistant the stream bed was waterproofed with coatings of fiberglass reinforced epoxy. The base coloring of the rockwork was done by adding dyes and/or pigments to the plaster and cement but then the real detail work that makes the rock look real is essentially faux painting using sponging, airbrush and glazing techniques. The floor however is the real thing "1" Pennsylvania Irregular flagging in a medium bed thinset application. The pond itself is fiberglass reinforced epoxy in a sheathing application over a wiggle plywood form.
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The plants installed are all real and keeping them watered was done by building and automatic watering system into the rockwork.
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We've also built a waterfall using the same techniques for a pet store too.
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And we've used the same techniques to build a shower that was in the shape of two cupped hands. Sorry no pictures of that one. I really regret that too in that it was really pretty cool. You could sit on a bent over thumb to scrub your feet.
Any questions feel free to ask.
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OK, I gotta say, seeing an indoor Koi pond built on the second floor of a house made my day.
You rock.
NotaClue
Awesome.The heck, you say?
Holy Mackeral that looks amazing. On a second story above a car-port no less....wow. I bet those folks don't buy their caviar with food stamps.
On the subject of excessive humidity. When you build something like that how do you control it?
Daniel Neuman
Oakland CA
Crazy Home Owner
Toured a house with water feature recently. Waterfall, small pond, plants, fish- whole deal. Very nice.
Then there was the; Mold, mildew, rotting trim boards (inside), paint pushing off siding outside...
Rough adding all that moisture in a cold climate. You can vent, but that's a lot of energy.
Perhaps not such an issue if yours is very small scale and only run occasionally.
I think there was a thread at House Chat where the guy even posted pictures of one he made. You may try the search function there to find that.
Since this will probably be used when they are relaxing in the tub, make sure you select a quiet pump. It would be very distracting to hear a whine or buzzing from the pump when there is little other noise in the room, especially with all the hard surfaces in a tiled bathroom.
If possible, could you locate the pump in a sealed (small door for access) and insulated section of an interior wall cavity to dampen the noise?
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/ponds/this is a site I used for info when I built my out door ponds, stream and waterfall.EPDM pond liner IIRC is EPDM roofing, roofing has the talcom, wash it off good.pumps come in many sizes, some of the water pond retailer have info about pump sizes, don't forget head.since a bath is an enclosed area you probably don't need a lot of noise cause of echo. we can hear our 4x6 falls from 30' away @ ~ 1500gphdon't forget a filter, lots of choices there, I built ours (skippy filter) but it is for outside, so we get alguewatch what you ise for tubing so you use the right fitting, there is flexible pvc
bobl Volo, non valeo
Baloney detecter