With the arrival of some half decent weather earlier this week, and the promise of it improving further, I bit the bullet and decided to make a concerted effort on the stream.
I said that I'd had a niggling problem to work out, but in fact there were two. One of which concerned the ground levels and support for the side walls of the liner. On the garden side I had been planning to use lumps of stone, but I knew that in reality they would move, and in any case just wouldn't look right.
Then I had a minor flash of inspiration... I had a some old roofing slates lying around and found that by carefully bashing them I could force them into the ground to form the sidewalls of the stream and support the liner and mortar and stones of the stream itself. Then the surrounding soil can be built up to them do what it likes as it expands and contracts with the weather. I didn't have enough slates to do the job properly but a quick look on ebay found somebody fairly local selling reclaimed ones at just under £1 each.
- DSC_0005 small.jpg (321.36 KiB) Viewed 6389 times
Having knocked those in and trimmed the liner, it was time to start getting 'permanent', which I did yesterday. Basically following Rik's method of wearing a pair of rubber gloves to manually squidge the mortar in and around the stones to create a one piece stream bed. As part of this work, the bridge was permanently mortared in, which was a somewhat traumatic time ( scared of getting mortar where it shouldn't go) but it is looking quite good, now.
- DSC_0010 small.jpg (338.75 KiB) Viewed 6389 times
- DSC_0009 small.jpg (347.41 KiB) Viewed 6389 times
Today, the plan is to to again follow Rik and wire brush the mortar off the face of the stones whilst it is still green.
Then I need to curb my impatience for a few days and allow it to cure properly before testing the water flow!
I forgot to mention that I've also installed a ball valve/flow restrictor, which can just be seen top left of the picture above. It may not be necessary but since I've had one in the garage from years ago, I decided to fit it whilst the pipe was easy to get to. Although the test flows showed the volume to be just about right, the mortar and rocks will have reduced the x-section of the stream, and the volume may need winding back a bit.