Water Features lose water due to evaporation but it is far less than most people would expect. There are several causes for water loss in a pond from the way it was built to floats set incorrectly. This is just a benchmark, all water features are different but if you are losing more than a 1/2 inch in the pond over 24 hours, you probably have a loss issue somewhere.
Most of the time, the water is escaping over the liner in the stream or waterfalls. Another common loss issue is the pond liner is lower than the level you are trying to keep it at.
There are very few calls we attend where there is an actual hole in the pond but nearly everyone calls us thinking that is the problem. There is a very easy way to tell if the pond has a hole in it.
Finding Leaks
The first thing to do is find out if you have a float (automatically fills up the pond), and if so, turn it off or prop it up so no water will come out of it. Turn off all streams, waterfalls or fountains, and let all the water make its way back into the pond.
Mark a rock where the water level sits and come back in 6 hours. If the level is at your mark, the pond itself is not losing water. If the water level has dropped, keep the stream etc off and let the pond sit for 24 hours.
Mark the current water level and check this mark in around 6 hours. If the water level has not dropped from this mark, this level indicates the maximum level of water that your pond can hold. If you want the pond to hold more water than this you need to find where ALL the low spots in the pond liner are. If the water continues to drop, keep repeating the above test until the water stops dropping and that is where the low liner/hole is.
Once you know the pond holds water, now it is time to see what the stream and or waterfall does. Keep the float off and plug everything back in and let it run long enough for the water to cycle back into the pond. Fill up the pond to the max water mark established earlier and watch the water level over the day and see how much the pond level drops. If pond level loss is greater than 3/8 of an inch, you are losing water due to splash or low liner in the stream. Start searching, there is usually more than 1 spot.
You have to be careful with floats that are charged 24 hours a day as it it is keeping your pond at the same level all the time so you might not be aware of any water loss until your water bill arrives and you get a surprise.
Next Steps
Finding leaks has been the most common repair we have done for the last 18 years and we have a very high success record for finding leaks when we have full access to the pond liner (no massive rocks and/or covered in concrete).
We strive to get your water loss to a minimum. We live in the Okanagan; it is a dry climate, and we can’t be wasting a precious resource. Unfortunately, there are several causes: a lot of splash, low liner, over filled ponds, the float is set wrong, punctured liner and construction issues that probably cause over 70% of the water features out there to lose too much water.
