Materials & Equipment

Calling all landscapers that tackle big ponds and complex koi ponds: if you are unsure that you are lining the pond in the right way and using the right techniques, you need some training, there is noThe course covers all you need to know from the vary basics of liner splicing to the sealing of quite complex details doubt about it. The best place to get that training is on the Firestone training course. It is such good value for money that you will wonder how they can ‘wine and dine’ you, put you up at a very comfortable hotel for the night, teach you for a full day how to install and splice up pond liner, whilst providing as much food and drink as you can consume during the day, all at such a rock bottom price of just over £200. Even if you forget all that, you come away with a certificate, all the tools you need for joining liners, instruction manual and even the ‘T’ shirt! Just the cost of materials you use up in the course of the ‘hands on’ practice must amount to more than the cost of the course.

Using plants in this way is easier, more economical and more aesthetically pleasing than many of the heavy engineering solutions. By this method several typical lakeland and waterways problems can be solved in one go, and it is something that could easily be taken up by the pondkeeper and wild fowl conservationist too.

Article and photos by Tom Roach 

With the environment moving steadily up the political agenda, business is now trying to find new ‘soft’ engineering solutions as opposed to more traditional ‘hard’ revetment techniques. The recent summer rainfall has sparked debate, not only how to protect areas from flooding but the associated risks that flooding brings. Erosion of rivers and lakes is a natural process and ‘hard’ engineering techniques that have been employed in the past are increasingly being seen as inappropriate and unsustainable. This has led to forward thinkers finding innovative natural ways to curb the onset of erosion using techniques that would occur in nature.

If there was ever an Aladdin's Cave for landscapers then Nailsea Patio
Supplies is it and John Marshall the owner is the Genie of the Lamp!

A tiny part of the vast array of hard landscaping products: The land on the horizon is another storage area mostly for natural stoneHere, between the A38 near Bristol and the M5 right next to Nailsea Railway Station, you’ll find all those impossible to find hard landscaping materials that you need in any quantity: paving, walling, both ‘recon’ and natural, brick, stone, slates, gravel to pebbles of every size from every corner of the country and mulching materials of every type and colour imaginable from shredded tyres to broken glass. And the prices? They are not design for the pick and mix hand scoop, we talk in tonnes and square metres here and the prices encourage you to buy in those sorts of quantities. There are ornament and containers, pergolas and archways. On top of that there is fencing, edging, sleepers (old and new), timber and the decking. There is proper top soil too and silver-sand for horticultural use; I haven’t seen that being sold by the ton for years. John even recycles old building products for use as hardcore or footings or fancy mulches. There is a lot of recycling going on here. Wait until you see some of the exotic mulches that seem straight out of an outré garden designers’ handbook with crushed and tumbled coloured glass,bricks, metal, rubber and most attractive of all, recycled toilet bowls!

Putting in a preformed liner often seems the easy option when contemplating building a water garden, but things dont are not that simple when it actually comes down to it, especially if the pool liner is a big one. Getting it precisely level can be almost a lottery and then trying to make it look natural and in keeping with the rest of the garden can then seem a hopeless task. Here we show how you can get a level and attractive feature that would be on a par with a pond created in any other way.

It has to be admitted that even a skillfull professionally installed water feature using fibreglass products is probably more suited to the urban or suburban garden, but there are distinct advantages when it comes to maintenance and keeping it clean. Fibreglass as opposed to a plastic ponds can be manufactured much larger and deeper and are therefore slightly more suitable for providing a home larger species of fish like koi, as long as the numbers are kept to a very few.

Garden lighting can make your garden useable as an outdoor room for more days of the year. It will create a new dimension to your lifestyle for social occasions and romantic tête-à-têtes. Also, added-security comes as a bonus without the use of the ubiquitous retina blistering megawatt halogens that create the ‘Colditz effect’ around so many homes these days.
The Americans have long since thought we are crazy. Good quality garden lighting has been around for years and here we are supposedly a nation of gardeners and what do we do but draw the blinds on our creations for six months of the year? The garden must be designed to be seen from the house and if it cannot be seen on a late autumnal night then light it up. Water gardens in particular seem to come to life even in the darkest months with lighting around, floating and underwater.

Tips on how to choose solar (photovoltaic) panels, solar pumps and solar lighting

First of all if you are really interested in getting a lot of power out of the sun, then you need something pretty efficient and panels that will actually give you power on a dull day. Rather than looking for a kit, buy a seperate solar panel to suit the job you have in mind for it. In our case it will be to run a 12volt pump. Once you have the power require by the pump, sourcing the panel should be easy.

For methods of measuring and evaluating what power you need from a photovoltaic panel : www.wholesalesolar.com/
When shopping for a solar electric system, always check the PTC rating (a PVUsa Test Conditions Rating) and the warranted minimum power rating of the solar panels that are used in the system. This very often differs quite considerably from the STC rating (Standard Conditions Rating), which is very often what a manufacturer will advertise as the power produced by that panel. Here's a link showing you a comparison of several 170 watt solar panels that are currently listed on the state of California’s website. http://www.partsonsale.com/mitsucomparison.html

Solar panels are manufactured in batches or lots with each solar panel varying in performance from the next one. So it seems prudent to assume that a manufacturer would send only the best panel from a production lot to be evaluated for it's PTC rating.

When shopping for a solar electric system, always look for the solar panels that have the longest factory warranties possible. 25 years should be the minimum. And beware of dealers that offer their own warranties beyond the manufacturers warranty. A 30 solar panel warranty may sound good at first glance, but do you really believe for a moment that the dealer will be around 30 years from now!

The part the system depends upon the most is the inverter that converts the D/C from the photovoltaic cells to A/C, which is the type of current your pump is likely to run on. Make sure this has a good long guarantee. The dealer is not doing you any favors by offering you a 5year inverter warranty because in the States it is a legal requirement. Always ask for at least a 10year warranty on the system's inverter.

For big solar panels, make sure you have professionally engineered racks to support them otherwise they will just buckle under the first storm.

Originally printed in the Water Gardener Magazine December 2002

Next time you get an electricity bill and it is a warm sunny day, take it outside and stand next to your pond. Feel the heat of the sun and enjoy it. Doesn’t it seem a shame to have to pay for the running of all the conveniences of life like heating and cooling and machines when there is that great power station in the sky pumping out all that energy for free?
Look down into the pool and (possibly) see the green gloom of the algae proliferating down in that water. If you have a biological filter system with u/v clarifiers, then look at that. Then say to yourself,
“Hey! I’m a complete IDIOT. Here are millions of the simplest plants on earth multiplying and growing and even moving, largely by the power of the sun, and I here am I spending money on electricity to destroy them, the production of which pollutes the planet!”

Is it time to seriously consider renewable power supplies for our water gardens? Does the technology not come up to scratch? If it does, is it too expensive to be worth considering?
These are questions we hope to be answering this week.

Sustainable resources, ‘green power’, renewable energy and carbon footprints are terms that persistently intrude on our daily lives. With the ever increasing worry about our energy consumption leading to increases in the levels of ‘greenhouse gases’ and therefore the threat of global warming, is the use of electrical power to pump filter water in our fish ponds just total decadence and pointless squandering of electrical power? The Marshall's Sustainability Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show gave a good example of how we might deal with it, so are Solar Power with Photovoltaic panels the answer in our dull country?

Oase leads the way in Solar pump and panel marketIn response to a growing concern, manufacturers of submersible pumps have tried more and more to make their pumps more energy efficient. But perhaps this is not enough, since these pumps areThe Solar panels in the Marshall's Sustainability Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show 2007 likely to be running none stop 24/7, and a continuous use of a small amount of electricity (like with the stand by lights on home electrical items) adds up to being the main drain on our domestic power consumption.

Meanwhile the manufacturers of Solar Power driven products have been keenly trying to tap into an ever-increasing demand for products driven by the sun. Unfortunately some of these manufacturers have been their own worst enemy in providing products to meet the demand, because basically the products don’t work.

Lights that barely light and pumps that hardly pump and solar panels that just fade away in just a short time do not endear the concept of Solar Power to the general public. So many people have been tempted by the prospect of some useful bit of lighting (cheap with six gallons of petrol from their petrol station) and been disappointed by pathetic glows that could be generated more effectively by luminous paint or glow-worms. As for solar powered submersible pumps, I have come across innumerable aquatic storekeepers that have actively discouraged people from considering solar power pumps and fountains.

The truth is that although the demand for solar power is increasing exponentially, even in the dull and cloudy UK, the technological magic of producing power from the sun has not got proportionately more sophisticated. HoweverA floating fountain with a remote panel is more effective than one that is integral. the technology is there to produce useable power for the home and gardener, it just aint cheap. Or at least I should say, it does not seem cheap.

If you were to take all your prospective electrical fuel bills at the current rates for the next ten years, you might find that you were paying a bit over the odds by having PROPER PROFESSIONAL STANDARD Solar panels installed. But if you were to factor in the probable increase in fuel costs in that time and that the power generation from your home will continue, you will then start to see you are on the winning side. If you have chosen to link into the National Grid you may even be earning money from the power you generate. If you have chosen to store your power, bear in mind the possible cost replacement storage batteries in that time, but in the long run this is no great expense.

On top of that you can rest assured that you ‘carbon-footprint’ is pretty small and that you positively doing something FOR the planet rather than doing LESS to damage it.
This week I am reprinting an article I wrote back in 2002 when I visited Anthony Skelton one of the first people in the country to make his house (his parent’s house actually) completely self-sufficient in electricity and even to generate more than enough power so that the excess actually was fed back into the National Grid and paid for by his electricity board. Anthony cut through reams of red tape to make his parent’s house the smallest power station in the country, a private bungalow in the heart of Warwickshire.

Gardeners conscious of water efficiency and conservation who collect their own supply of rainwater runoff could be watering the garden with polluted water because of water butt neglect. Even though plants should prefer rainwater to tap water, it has long been observed that water from water butts that has been left to stand for too long actually makes plants sick and is often referred to as 'water butt sickness'. There are however products on the market like Biotal REFRESH from Guaber UK Ltd., that provide a natural treatment for stored water and keeps it in tip-top condition.