A River Runs Through It

By Jason Jayne, Tumber & Associates

Tumber designed and installed the entire water feature, which consists of three creeks that merge in the final lower pond [three sources that merge into two rivers that finally merge into one at lower pond]. The entire water feature is completely lined with EPDM liner, which is protected and covered with large boulders. The plants shown include large Japanese maple in the foreground (then clockwise), Stella D'oro daylilies, Ostrich Ferns, Sumac, Colorado Blue Spruce (all in the backdrop too), Beech tree (turning yellow for Fall), upright or Columnar Japanese Yews (Junipers up close to water) White Cedar, White Pine (upper right corner) with a White Paper Birch in front of it that has lost most of its leaves for the season (yellow Rudbeckia or 'Black Eyed Susan' throughout). Photos courtesy of Jason Jayne, Tumber & Associates

Tumber & Associates created the ultimate green environment getaway in the middle of an upscale suburban neighborhood. Tumber & Associates designed and built absolutely every aspect of this project from start to finish. A new home on a lot with no landscape elements whatsoever, not even a lawn, offered the ultimate canvas for green technologies.

''The client wanted an elaborate outdoor living space with many elements all combined and compressed into a relatively small, upscale suburban environment,'' said the contractor. The project's elements included a pool, cabana with full kitchen, in-floor heating and a fireplace, as well as a gazebo, water features, reflecting pool, statuary, fire pit, hot tub, outdoor BBQ, wood-fired pizza oven in an underground grotto with waterfalls, and a large space for entertaining. Due to the home's northern location, Tumber & Associates designed the landscape for year-round use; this meant creating freeze-proof, low-maintenance elements. One particular feature was an elaborate water feature that could simply turn on and off, at will, all year round without any associated plumbing or electrical issues.

At the Kleinburg Residence, In Kleinburg, Ontario, Tumber & Associates started with a completely empty backyard. They installed a freeform shaped fiberglass San Juan swimming pool. Tumber craned the pool into place [one of the many benefits of fiberglass] when the site was ready and added custom swim jets that could be remotely turned on when necessary They poured the concrete around the pool to create the decking that was finished in flagstone. The pool terrace was finished with natural ''Wiarton'' flagstone, which were handpicked by Tumber workers and then trucked in from a quarry from just north of the project.

The plants and trees shown here are (clockwise from left foreground) Stella D'oro daylilies, White Paper Birch, Colorado Blue Spruce (all in the backdrop too), Iris, yellow Rudbeckia or 'Black Eyed Susan' throughout and Cedar.

All of the naturally weathered limestone boulders were chosen to reflect the naturally occurring rock of the area, and they were harvested locally. (Tumber always tries for the 100-mile rule). Tumber handpicked each boulder according to the characteristics required for the different areas of the landscape and water feature.

Challenges

While it's relatively commonplace in large-scale commercial applications to design and engineer water feature systems from the ground up, such a project is rarely seen in a residential setting. As the design evolved and became more elaborate, the need for more energy-efficient systems and controls became crucial. In addition to the original water feature, which included numerous cascades with a relatively wide watercourse, the project featured an underground ''Pizza Grotto''' with two additional sets of waterfalls emanating from its rooftop. This massive flow required that Tumber upgrade the systems to include multiple pumps.

Combining of the watercourses required additional storage for all of the water in transit, which could not be contained in the lower pond once the system powered down. Additionally, to achieve the total desired flow of approximately 850 gallons per minute, the pumps required a large holding tank and 6-inch plumbing to allow enough water to be available-on demand-when ramping up to higher settings. To make operating this system as straightforward and simple as possible, all of the necessary systems were implemented into one automated solution.

Tumber workers used loaders to move many huge boulders into place to create/retain a large enough berm to hide all these elements in this corner lot, as well as to cover the container that became the grotto.

Fabricators at Tumber & Associates had to build a special excavator ''arm'' (they called ''T-rex'') in order to place large boulders inside the underground grotto.

Tumber hoisted in a recycled shipping container to form the underground grotto's foundation and structure.

Green Landscape

All plant materials were chosen for their ability to require the lowest amount of maintenance possible in this climate. Largely native plants and trees form the foundation of the plantings with some tried and true perennials and specimens being used to balance the design and compliment the architecture of the home, and emphasis the natural effect further into the backyard.

Environmentally Friendly Features

Many sustainable elements were utilized, as this has been the mandate in all that Randy Tumber has designed and built for more than 34 years. No water gets dumped in to city drainage, because the system's underground cistern and pump chamber is a closed system. Tumber utilized recycled materials whenever possible, including: recycled barn boards/beams on hot tub and Pizza Grotto; a recycled shipping container for structure of pizza grotto; and, mainly native plants. By automating much of the backyard, Tumber built instant energy savings into the system. As an example, VFDs drive the pool and water feature pumps, which amount to a 60 to 80-percent savings over pumps with no VFD's. Tumber kept to low voltage landscape lighting and LED lighting in the pool.

For water conservation, Tumber chose native plants and planted everything in mulch. For the cabana, they employed an in-floor heating system, which also heats the pool itself. This system is more energy efficient than the originally specified, traditional natural gas pool heater.

The 'Mugnaini' pizza oven under the waterfalls was integrated into an exterior finished with weathered/mossy limestone fieldstone that Tumber collected personally. The barbeque and side burner ''DCS'' brand sits in a thick slab counter of Wiarton flagstone material to match the rest of the design's stonework. Tumber manufactured the custom outdoor kitchen configuration in one week at their facility and craned it into place during construction. The outdoor kitchen features a firewood storage niche for the nearby firepit, for the natural stone fireplace in the cabana and to fuel the pizza oven. The two cooking stations round out the full gourmet marble kitchen that is installed inside the pool cabana.

The walkways feature natural Wiarton flagstone with two bridges constructed of giant limestone slabs large enough to span the river, and two bridges of recycled antique barn timbers (hemlock/pine) were installed to match the grotto/ mine effect.

Water Feature Challenges

Another of the project's unique aspects was specifying larger, variable-frequency drives (VFD) in conjunction with 3-phase submersible pumps. While the use of on-grade VFD pumps producing 45-120 gallons per minute on a swimming pool is now commonplace, and specifying much larger submersible pumps for commercial/public installations is the norm; using this technology in residential water features is not yet widespread.

In order to incorporate VFD's into this particular project, more time was spent on research and development at the test facility ponds than anticipated. Tumber tested to determine the proper size and select separate pump and drive components capable of operating with the automation system to produce the desired effect.

In order to tie together several unrelated elements, an automation specialist spent many hours sorting through various configurations in addition to communicating with the software programmers themselves.

Tumber & Associates started with a completely blank slate, not even so much as turf was present.

The use of multiple pumps, with the ability to program each separately, was another successful technique. Often in custom natural-stone water features there are variables coming into play during the construction process, which may not have been foreseen. For instance, to maintain an even cascade effect over the top of the grotto, and to keep the water in its basin, required some adjustments to achieve a minimum of 250 gallons per minute on all run schedules, as the descent was more than five feet.

With the two main rivers being different sizes, capacity and elevation, it also became a challenge to set the proper weir heights using natural stone. The narrower and higher river, which flowed around a sunken hot tub, required a more tranquil setting and sound. To achieve this, intermediate spill chambers were designed to allow a fairly even distribution of water volume during low-to-medium flow settings. The chambers also had to be precisely set to allow for a greater volume of water on high-flow settings in order to distribute the water primarily to the larger stream, which could handle the increased capacity.

It was also necessary to design the upper-spill chamber and weirs to handle the volume change from the lowest to the highest settings and to visually maintain the waterfall effect required for that particular cascade.

The plants shown, front left and clockwise, include: Spreading Yew, White Cedar, Strawberries, White Paper Birch, Burning Bush, and Sumac. All the rocks were brought in and placed for effect and water retaining value. The hot tub was finished with recycled barn boards.

This is the largest lower pond where all the streams culminate and Koi inhabit. Tumber endeavors to landscape under the water level as well as above for maximum realism, shelter for fish and wildlife, and to replicate nature. Water clarity is excellent due to designing the system with all the necessary natural elements and proper circulation.

The Importance Of Pre-Design

These tests also underline the importance of designing energy-efficient systems. Installing VFD's on both a 5-HP and a 7.5-HP pump represented a significant up-front investment for the client. However, with a few calculations, Tumber was able to establish precise payback periods, which would offset any additional costs. Additionally, the ability to program specific run schedules to meet the client's lifestyle and entertaining habits made this type of system more desirable, as did easily accessible touch-pad screens in common living areas, and the ability to access the system remotely, or via a mobile device.

Building the water feature required a full-scale mock-up to establish correct water flow, weir width, height and profile. Precise calculations had to be made to create the desired effect, taking into consideration the mid-stream location of the statue to maintain the integrity of the cascade.

Using a VFD pump and controls for the swimming pool made it easy to add on a ''Lazy River'' option to the pool, and exploiting the cabana's in-floor heating boiler to also heat the pool offered further cost savings to the client as it had enough capacity and greater efficiency than the standard pool heater originally specified.

The equipment room in the cabana houses the pool equipment and in-floor heating system for the cabana. This wall mounted heating system also heats the pool (instead of the Starite pool in the left foreground) as it was 98 percent more efficient than the pool heater.

Located in the home's basement, the equipment control system was positioned away from the master panel and equipment in the pool cabana and is the ''Slave'' (on left) or secondary panel that communicates with the master to control the waterfalls and stream flow and ties into the overall home automation system. This allows the client to choose multiple programmed flows for ''wow'' factor at gatherings, and slower flows for energy savings at other times. The two tall devices are the Variable Frequency Drives (VFD's) that control the speed of the two submersible pumps in the water feature.

The Water Feature

Constant circulation is the key to creating a natural water feature capable of maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Circulation allows natural processes, as well as biological and mechanical filtration, to do their job successfully. To achieve this, the obvious choice was to use VFD's along with pumps, as it allows for circulation 24/7, while minimizing costs and reducing the need for extensive maintenance or intervention by the client.

Coordinating the construction schedule to deliver material and equipment in the proper sequence was a challenge. The system required designating ''master'' and ''slave'' electronic panels in two locations, which also needed the appropriate utilities in order to communicate. The availability of expansion modules made the installation relatively straightforward and allowed the same program and user interface to be used for automating the irrigation, landscape lighting, swimming pool lighting, swim jets, stereo and video options.

The final touches on this project included tuning the waterfalls for appropriate sound and introducing aquatic plants and fish to the water.

This waterfall was designed to be a sheer that the clients can look through while cooking in the underground pizza grotto. A full mock up was built at Tumber's facilities to ensure the proper flow and weir needed to achieve this effect. Twin submersible pumps totalling 12.5 horsepower control all the water features, not including the pool and hot tub. Randy Tumber, along with the client, chose the bronze statue, called ''Ariel.''

The bridge over one of two rivers surrounds the hot tub on an island. It contains a ''self-cleaning Hydropool'' hot tub finished with recycled antique barn boards. They laid in the low flow irrigation system, and all the plant beds were mulched to maintain moisture.

Environmentally Friendly = Good Business