Having fun on a Sunny Day!

 

Hooray it stopped raining!   So I went out in the sunshine and played with water!  Pictured above are the basics of the waterfall testing.   A Radio Shack remote to a power on/off devise that the pump is hooked to.  Very simple but it turns it into a wireless interactive display!  Why not, my grandsons have played with that very same gadget for years on my own layouts waterfall.  They all had fun turning it off and on.



 I came up with the idea of using a gutter splash block as the delivery device for the waterfall.   A heavy garden stone holds it in place and the 30 inch drop is equal to 60 feet in G scale.  I have a lot more to test, but I think it is very promising.  The first video is a mock up of what a real strong pump might look like.  (All I did was turn on the hose and started to fill up the tub from the splashblock.)

 

  Short video of water test-1



OK, I know not fair, but all I have is a weak pump with very poor connections.  Still the 2nd video shows a nice simple flow. Notice how the sides of the waterfall are well defined.  That is from the special shape of the splashblock.  It gives the waterfall a good shape, take a quick look:



   Test-2 with weak pump   



The Mall has a strong commercial sump pump that we can use!  As I said I will need to do a lot more serious testing and make sure it will not splash out.  Keith would not like that.  But for today I would say: Having fun and off to a good start.

The plan is to have the waterfall drop from a height of 45 inches into the same tub shown that will sit on the floor inside a hole in the main deck 15 inches high.  There will be two special risers (A and B) on either side of the tub connected by Tiny's 3 foot iron bridge that the inner loop will cross over.