On Saturday we worked hard at getting the flat stones just so. We inspected and adjusted and shimmed, looked again, tweaked it a little and finally we moved to the next stone. We got all the stones where we thought they should be and started spraying the "pucky."
"Pucky" is the term used to describe the black foam used to secure the stones. This stuff is sticky and just loved getting on my fingers. Being the klutz I am I even put the palm of my hand on some "pucky" and came away with a nice layer of black foam curing on my palm. You can't wipe this stuff off unless you use mineral spirits. By the end of the day I had black hands and black spots on my shorts.
I tried to get the "pucky" off with mineral spirits but I guess you need to get it off while it is still curing not after it dries. When I hopped into the shower last night I took a pumice stone and tried to scrub the stuff off my hands. It worked pretty good. I now have sore hands and a few scabs where I not only removed the black "pucky" I removed my skin. I think I went a bit overboard on getting rid of the "pucky."
Back to the waterfall. We sprayed two large cans of "pucky" and patted ourselves on the back for a job well done. The expert left with a plan to return today for touch-up.
There were a couple of problems with our work that showed up after starting the pump. First the new waterfall raised the water level of the pond by about 3 inches. This brought the water just to the top of the rubber pond liner. Not a problem in the summer but in the winter when the water freezes it will overflow. The second problem is about 75 percent of the water was flowing on the west side of the falls.... it was lopsided. Thus Plan B was born.
We pried up all the stones except one. We wire brushed the stones to remove all the "pucky" and basically started over. After about 3 hours we had the preliminary stone configuration tacked in, again, and when the foam cured enough I was going to run the pump and see how it looked. In the mean time my expert had to leave for other commitments. You'd think it was Sunday for crying out loud. He will return Monday afternoon when we can, hopefully, finish the waterfall.
There is FROG news... this is a frog blog after all. Last night Joe made an appearance. I guess she was checking out the new stones. Apparently she liked them because when I went out to feed the birds this morning I went looking for Joe. She was in the pond but not at her usual place but close enough. I guess I spooked her. She dove for cover as I approached the pond. Her cover was under one of the largest flat stones we put in mostly for aesthetics. She seemed to be at home with the new digs.
I'll come up with a picture of the new layout and advise how it turns out in my next post.
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