Last year I put in a creek in behind the brewery. We purchased a solar powered pump to fill the creek with water but we soon discovered that a lot of the water in the creek went missing. Knowing the rubber liner was flawless we considered evaporation. But digging around the lower creek I discovered to true culprit - the soil decorated the creek bottom was lifting the water out. I dug out the rubber lining, cleaned out the dirt and re-dug the bottom down an inch below the edge of pond to insure there would always be water in the lower creek. The whole project was complete before the end of the first weekend.
For the upper creek I decided to use a large electric pump with a 3/4" hose to feed a waterfall 25 feet away. The water would return though the culvert under the train tracks continuing through rapids to feed the lower creek and eventually back to the pond. A dedicated GFI receptacle and timer circuit were wired up to feed the 120 volt extension cord hidden underneath the brewery.
Creating the upper creek was a lot harder than the lower creek and took me an addition three weeks to get it working the way I wanted. The rocks I choose to use were around up to 50 lbs each. Problems with the powerful pump throwing water out the creek and lower edges of the rubber sheets made lifting the rocks out and reposition a back-breaking and re-occurring task. With a pump that could easily empty the pond within 15 minutes I had to make sure everything was perfect. The train track had to be pulled up and hoses and extension cords had to be buried and everything re-leveled . Using a plastic ruler in the pond to measure the height of water I was able to run the pump continuously for six hours with only 1 mm of water loss.
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