Category: Water Features

Your fountain used to throw a full, even sheet of water. Now it coughs, dribbles down one side and hums louder than it should. Most of the time that isn’t a dead pump. It’s a dirty one, a low reservoir or a build-up of scale, and you can fix all three in an afternoon with a bucket, an old toothbrush and some white vinegar.

Our guide to choosing and placing garden water features covers the quick everyday habits. This one goes further: the routine that keeps a recirculating fountain running for years, and how to tell a maintenance job from a real fault.

A routine that actually fits a busy week

Three habits, spaced out, cover it.

• Weekly in the warm months: check the water level, scoop out leaves and flowers, and listen to the pump for a few seconds. A change in pitch is often your first warning.
• Monthly: pull the pump, clean the intake and impeller, and wipe the bowl or spillway before slime gets a grip.
• Each season change: drain and refill with fresh water, check the cord and plug, and descale anything that has gone chalky.

Under a gum in flowering season, check more often. Blossom clogs an intake fast.

How do you clean a fountain pump properly?

Rinsing the outside helps, but the real gunk lives inside. Most small fountain pumps come apart by hand.

1. Unplug it first: never put your hands in the water while the pump is plugged in.
2. Take off the intake cover: it usually clips or twists off. If there’s a foam pre-filter, squeeze it out in a bucket of fountain water.
3. Remove the impeller: on most magnetic-drive pumps it pulls straight out of its housing. Check your pump’s manual if it resists.
4. Scrub the impeller and its chamber: an old toothbrush gets out the hair, fibre and grit that wind around the shaft and slow it down.
5. Check for damage: chipped or worn blades, or a shaft that wobbles, mean the pump is on its way out.

Put it back together and run it in a bucket before it goes back in the feature. If it’s still noisy after a clean, our rundown of why water pumps get noisy or start vibrating will help you narrow it down.

Scale: the white crust nobody warns you about

If you live somewhere with hard water, you’ll see a chalky white crust on the bowl, around the spout and eventually inside the pump. That’s minerals left behind each time water evaporates and you top up. Inside the pump it stiffens the impeller and cuts the flow.

White vinegar sorts most of it. Soak the impeller and the pump housing in a container of straight vinegar for a few hours, then scrub and rinse well in fresh water. For the bowl, drain it, scrub the crust with a vinegar and water mix and a stiff brush, then rinse thoroughly before refilling.

Rainwater is soft, so if you have a tank, using it for top-ups slows the build-up. That’s the simplest long-term fix.

Is it evaporation, splash or a leak?

Every fountain loses some water to sun, wind and splash. The question is whether yours is losing more than it should.

Try the bucket test. Turn the fountain off, mark the water level with a piece of tape, and leave it for a day. If the level barely moves while it’s off but drops quickly when it’s running, you’re losing water to splash or wind, not a leak. Lower the flow, move the feature out of the wind, or adjust the spout so the water lands inside the bowl.

If it drops just as fast with the pump off, you have a leak. Check the bowl for hairline cracks, the liner for punctures, and any fittings where the tubing joins the spout.

What should go in the water, and what shouldn’t?

Clean, fresh water is all a fountain needs. Birds and pets drink from it, so be careful what you add.

• Avoid: household bleach, pool chlorine and general-purpose cleaners. They aren’t made for water that animals drink.
• Worth considering: enzyme treatments and clarifiers sold specifically for fountains and birdbaths. Read the label and check it’s described as safe for wildlife.
• Usually better: more frequent water changes and regular scrubbing, which fix most cloudiness without any product at all.

If green water keeps coming back despite all this, the cause is usually sunlight and nutrients rather than dirt. Our guide to controlling algae for clearer water works through that properly.

Check the power side, too

Water and electricity sit close together in a fountain, so look over the cord and plug each season. Cracked insulation, a cord chewed by a pet or possum, or a plug that sits in a puddle all need fixing before you switch back on.

Outdoor power for a water feature should be protected by a safety switch (RCD). Installing or moving an outdoor power point is work for a licensed electrician. Your state or territory electrical safety regulator explains the rules where you live.

Shutting down for a frosty winter

In mild coastal areas you can run a fountain all year. In frost-prone places like Canberra, the NSW Southern Tablelands or the Victorian highlands, water freezing in a bowl or pump housing can crack it. Before the first hard frosts, drain the feature, clean and dry the pump, and store it indoors. Cover or turn over the bowl so it doesn’t fill with rain and freeze.

When cleaning isn’t enough

A pump that’s still weak after a full clean and descale, trips the safety switch, or has a worn or loose shaft is telling you something. Small fountain pumps aren’t designed to be rebuilt endlessly. Our guide to how long water pumps last and when to replace them will help you decide whether to repair or replace it.

Usually, though, a fountain that’s gone quiet just needs half an hour with a toothbrush and some vinegar.

Got a blank wall in a courtyard, or a balcony with no room for anything on the floor? A wall-mounted water feature is one of the few ways to get moving water into that kind of space. Getting one right has less to do with the feature than with the wall behind it, where the water ends up, and how you’ll get to the pump when it needs a clean.

Three kinds of wall feature, and what each asks of your wall

These get lumped together, but they behave very differently on a wall.

• Freestanding wall-style features: a panel on its own base, with water running down the face into a reservoir below. It stands against the wall, so the wall carries nothing. The easy option for renters and no-drill balconies.
• Wall-hung features: a panel, mask or bowl hung on the wall, usually with a small reservoir in the bottom lip. Almost no floor space, but the whole thing, water included, hangs off your fixings.
• A spout into a trough or basin: a spout fixed to the wall, pouring into a trough or bowl below. The pump sits in the lower vessel and a hose runs up to the spout. It looks built in, and takes the most planning.

Our guide to choosing and placing garden water features covers the basics. This post sticks to what’s specific to walls.

Can your wall take it?

Water is heavy, and a wall-hung feature holds its weight a long way off the ground. Before you hang anything, find out what the wall is made of and how the feature’s maker says to fix it.

• Solid brick, block or concrete: the friendliest backing. Use masonry anchors rated for the load, drilled into the brick or block itself rather than the mortar joints.
• Timber or steel stud walls: the fixings need to go into the studs or into proper noggins, not just the cladding. Hanging a full reservoir off plasterboard or thin sheeting is how features end up on the ground.
• Rendered walls: render is a skin, not a structure. Find out what’s underneath and fix through into that.

If the maker doesn’t state the filled weight, ask. If you can’t tell what’s behind the wall, go freestanding.

Moisture behind the feature

A feature that splashes or wicks water onto the wall will leave its mark. Porous render and bare brick can stain, grow moss or show white mineral deposits, and a timber-framed wall can suffer if water gets past the cladding. Pick a design with a solid backing panel, and check the wall after the first few weeks.

Balconies: approval, splash and wind

On an apartment balcony, the first question isn’t which feature. It’s what you’re allowed to do. Drilling into external walls, adding weight to the slab or running new power can touch common property, depending on your strata plan. Check with your owners corporation, body corporate or strata committee before you start; the rules vary by state and territory. Renters also need the landlord’s okay for anything fixed to a wall.

Then there’s wind. A breeze that feels mild at ground level can be much stronger a few floors up, and it carries spray sideways off a sheeting face or tall spout, onto your floor and possibly the balcony below. A short drop with a gentle flow, set back from the balustrade, is far easier to live with.

A small reservoir runs dry faster than you’d think

Wall features usually hold less water than a bowl or urn of similar looks, because the reservoir has to be slim. Sun, wind and splash all draw it down, and a pump that runs dry can overheat and fail. Expect to top it up more often than a ground-level feature, especially in summer. A model with a visible water level helps.

Keep the pump small, too. A feature built for a gentle trickle doesn’t need much flow, and oversizing it just throws more water off the face. For a replacement pump or a spout-and-trough design, the thinking in our guide to sizing a pond pump for flow and height applies at a smaller scale: match the flow to the height the water has to climb.

Getting power to it

A mains-powered feature needs an outdoor power point close by. If there isn’t one, installing it is a job for a licensed electrician, with the rules set by your state or territory’s electrical safety regulator. Don’t run an extension lead through a window or door to a feature sitting in water. On a balcony, a new outlet may also need the same strata sign-off as any other change.

Where there’s no power at all, a solar feature can work if the wall gets direct sun for a good part of the day. A shaded courtyard wall is usually a poor spot for one. Our comparison of solar and mains-powered fountains helps you pick.

Plan how you’ll reach the pump

Every pump needs its intake cleared now and then. On wall-hung models, check the pump lifts out without taking the feature off the wall. On a spout-and-trough setup, keep the pump and hose where you can reach them, not sealed behind render. If cleaning means unscrewing a heavy panel full of water, it won’t get done.

A word about noise

Between courtyard walls or stacked balconies, water noise carries. The trickle you love from your chair can be what your neighbour hears through a bedroom window at night. A timer, or a flow you can turn down, keeps the peace.

Before you buy

• Know your wall: what it’s made of, and whether you’re allowed to drill it.
• Ask for the filled weight: and fix to suit, or go freestanding.
• Keep the flow gentle: especially on a windy balcony.
• Sort power first: an existing outdoor outlet, a licensed electrician, or a sunny wall for solar.
• Make the pump easy to reach: so you’ll actually clean it.

If there’s already a weatherproof power point within reach of where the fountain will sit, go mains. If the nearest power is a long way off and you’re happy for the water to stop when the sun goes, go solar. The decision comes down to two facts: where the power is, and when you want to hear the water.

There’s a third option too: a plug-in low voltage pump, which sits between the other two.

The three ways to power a fountain

• Solar: a small panel (sometimes with a battery) drives the pump. No cable back to the house, no running cost, but the output follows the weather.
• Plug-in low voltage: a transformer plugs into an existing outdoor power point and sends low voltage down a cable to the pump. Steady flow, and the cable out to the feature isn’t carrying mains.
• Mains: a mains voltage pump plugged straight into an outdoor outlet. The most flow and the widest choice of pumps, and it runs whenever you switch it on.

How solar kits work inside, and why some carry a battery, is covered in our guide to what solar pumps can and can’t do. This one is about choosing between the three.

How they compare side by side

	Solar	Plug-in low voltage	Mains
Needs an outdoor power point	No	Yes, an existing one	Yes
Runs at night and on grey days	Only with a battery, and only as long as it lasts	Yes	Yes
Flow and lift	Modest	Small to moderate	The widest range
Running cost	None	Small	Small, more for bigger pumps
Parts that wear	Pump, panel, battery if fitted	Pump, transformer	Pump
Where it shines	Features far from power	Courtyards and patios near the house	Bigger features and anything with fish

Which one fits your yard?

A courtyard or patio feature next to the house

If there’s an outdoor power point on the wall already, mains or plug-in low voltage is the easy answer. You get water moving in the evening when you’re outside with a drink.

A birdbath or bubbler down the back of the block

This is solar’s home ground. Running power fifteen or twenty metres down a yard means trenching and a new outlet, and all that effort buys you a birdbath that runs after dark when the birds are asleep anyway. Put the panel where it gets clear midday sun and let it run when the sun’s up.

You rent, or you’re not staying long

Solar or plug-in low voltage, because neither needs new fixed wiring. Both come with you when you move. Any new outdoor outlet is a change to the property, so it needs the owner’s say-so as well as an electrician.

A shaded garden under big trees

Skip solar. A panel that sits in dappled shade for most of the day will leave the pump stuttering, and there’s rarely a clear spot nearby to move it to. Mains or low voltage will give you the flow the shade can’t.

A pond with fish, or water that runs through a filter

Mains. Fish and filters need the water moving around the clock, and a solar pump stops when the sun does. Our guide to choosing and placing garden water features covers the difference between a self-contained fountain and a pond-fed one if you’re unsure which you’ve got.

What does each cost you over the years?

Solar looks cheapest because there’s no power bill, and for a small feature that’s genuinely true. The catch is the parts. A solar kit adds a panel, and often a battery, to the list of things that can wear out. The battery is a consumable: it holds less charge as it ages and eventually needs replacing, which a mains pump never asks of you.

Mains costs a little to run, more with a bigger pump, and a small fountain pump on a timer is a modest line on the bill. The big cost is up front, and only if you don’t have an outdoor outlet. If an outlet is already there, that up-front cost disappears.

Low voltage lands in between. It has a small running cost like mains, plus a transformer that can fail, but nothing on the panel-and-battery list.

Where the electrician comes into it

A solar kit, or a low voltage pump plugged into a power point you already have, is something you can set up yourself. Installing a new outdoor power point, or running fixed mains wiring out into the garden, is licensed electrical work in Australia. That’s a job for a licensed electrician, and the rules are set by the electrical safety regulator in your state or territory. Check with them if you’re unsure where the line sits. Don’t run an extension lead out a window to a pump sitting in water.

So which one?

• Go solar if: the feature is far from power, it’s small and decorative, it gets clear midday sun, and you don’t mind it going quiet in the evening.
• Go plug-in low voltage if: there’s an outdoor outlet nearby and you want reliable flow in a courtyard, on a patio or in shade, without mains cable running through the garden.
• Go mains if: the feature is bigger, lifts water any real height or has fish or a filter, and you have or will pay for a proper outdoor outlet.

If you’re still sketching out the whole garden, start with our overview of water in the Australian garden and come back to the fountain once you know where everything else is going.

Want the sound of running water without a pond to maintain? That is exactly what a pondless waterfall gives you. Water tumbles over rock, then disappears into a hidden reservoir underground and gets pumped straight back up to do it all again. No open pool of standing water, no fish to look after, and a lot less to go wrong.

What a pondless waterfall actually is

A standard pond holds its water in a visible basin lined with a liner or a preformed shell. A pondless waterfall flips that around: the water still sits in a liner-lined basin, but that basin is buried and covered with gravel and rock so all you ever see is the waterfall itself. The reservoir underneath holds the water, a submersible pump keeps it circulating, and the whole system tops itself up as it runs.

The effect is the same movement and sound as a pond-fed waterfall, just without a visible body of water sitting there between uses.

Why families and low-maintenance gardeners choose them

A few practical reasons this style keeps coming up in smaller Australian backyards:

• Safety: there is no open water for a toddler to wander into, which matters a lot for young families and for anyone with grandkids visiting.
• Upkeep: no fish to feed, no algae blooming in open water, no netting for leaves floating on a pond surface.
• Footprint: the reservoir can be sized to fit an odd corner or a narrow side yard that would never fit a proper pond.
• Flexibility: because there is no visible water body, the feature can be tucked right up against a fence line, a deck or a garden bed without the safety and space concerns a pond raises.

If you love the sound and movement of water but do not want another thing to manage on the weekend, this is usually the format people land on.

How the reservoir and pump actually work together

Underneath the rock you see, there is a buried basin (sometimes a rigid tank, sometimes a flexible liner shaped into a pit) that holds the working volume of water. A submersible pump sits in that reservoir, pushes water up through hidden tubing to the top of the waterfall, and gravity does the rest as it runs back down over the rock and gravel and soaks back into the reservoir below.

Because the water is always moving and never sits exposed to full sun the way a shallow pond edge does, algae growth is generally far less of an issue than it is in an open pond.

Sizing and siting: match the system, do not guess it

The reservoir needs enough capacity to hold the water that is “in transit” up on the waterfall and in the tubing at any given moment, plus a buffer for evaporation between top-ups. A taller, wider waterfall moves more water through the system at once and needs a larger reservoir and a pump matched to that flow, while a small, tucked-away feature can run on a much smaller setup.

Siting matters just as much as sizing. A gentle existing slope makes the build far easier than flat ground, and you want a spot where the sound carries to where you actually sit, not off toward a side fence nobody uses. One thing people skip at this stage is what is already growing in that spot: a reservoir pit is a real excavation, and cutting through the structural roots of an established tree to make it fit can leave that tree unstable years later. If the spot you like sits under a mature canopy, get an on-site assessment from an arborist like Waratah Professional Tree Care before the shovel goes in. Keep the final pump and reservoir size decision for the specific feature you are building rather than copying numbers from a different yard: every waterfall’s height, width and flow rate changes what it needs.

The build, at a high level

Most pondless waterfall builds follow the same broad sequence:

• Dig the basin: sized for your reservoir, in the spot you have settled on.
• Set the reservoir: either a rigid basin or a liner shaped and secured into the hole.
• Place the pump and plumbing: pump in the reservoir, tubing run up to where the waterfall will spill from.
• Build the rock structure: the actual waterfall shape, using rock and boulders to create the fall and the sound.
• Cover with gravel: gravel and stone laid over the reservoir lid so nothing but rock and water is visible from above.
• Fill, test and adjust: fill the reservoir, run the pump, and adjust rock placement until the water flow and sound are right.

It is fiddly work getting the rock placement right so the water falls where you want it rather than sheeting off sideways, so budget more time for that stage than you think you will need.

Power, safety and keeping it running

The pump needs a fixed power connection, and that outdoor point should always be wired by a licensed electrician onto a properly RCD-protected circuit. Do not run a permanent water feature off an extension lead as a long-term solution.

Once it is running, upkeep is genuinely light. Top up the reservoir occasionally to cover evaporation, especially over a hot stretch, clear leaves and debris out of the rock structure a couple of times a year, and check the pump is still moving water freely rather than labouring. That is about the extent of it.

If you are still weighing this up against a traditional pond, our guide to building a garden pond walks through the fuller build process for an open water feature, and our rundown on submersible versus surface pumps explains the pump side of either option in more depth. Both link back to our full guide to water in the Australian garden.

If you want the sound of moving water in the garden without digging a pond, a self-contained water feature is the easiest way in. It is a bowl, urn or stacked-stone piece with a small pump hidden inside, recirculating the same water over and over. No excavation, no fish to keep alive, and you can have it running the same afternoon you bring it home. The trick is matching the feature, the pump and the spot to each other so it looks right, sounds right and doesn’t turn into a chore.

The main types, and which suits your yard

Water features fall into a few honest categories, and picking the right family first saves you a lot of grief later.

• Self-contained bowls and urns: everything sits in one vessel with a hidden reservoir. The simplest option and the best starting point for most people.
• Spill and cascade features: water tips from one level to the next. More movement and more noise, so they suit a spot where you want the sound to carry.
• Pondless waterfalls: water disappears into a hidden gravel-filled reservoir instead of an open pool. Safer around little kids and lower on maintenance, since there is no open body of water to keep clear.
• Pond-fed features: a fountain or spillway plumbed into an existing pond. Lovely if you already have a pond, but now the feature and the pond share one system, so size the pump for both.

If you are weighing whether the pump for one of these should sit in the water or beside it, our explainer on submersible versus surface pumps walks through where each one earns its keep.

Getting the sound you actually want

This is the part people get wrong. The sound is not about how much water you move, it is about how far the water falls and what it lands on. A short trickle into a full bowl gives you a soft, gentle babble. The same water dropping a bit further onto pebbles or a hard surface gives you a brighter, busier splash. So before you buy, picture where you will be sitting. A gentle burble is perfect right beside an outdoor lounge, but you will barely hear it from the back step. Want it to mask road noise from the front of the block? You need more drop and more splash, which usually means a taller spill feature, not a bigger pump on a low bowl.

Mains power or solar: an honest comparison

Both have their place, and the right pick comes down to where the feature lives.

Solar fountain pumps run off a small panel and need no wiring at all, which makes them brilliant for a spot far from the house where running power would be a hassle. The catch is simple: they push water while the sun is on the panel and ease off when a cloud rolls over or the afternoon shadow creeps across. If you want a steady, all-day flow you can rely on, or you want it running of an evening, a solar pump on its own will frustrate you. Some come with a small battery to smooth that out, but keep your expectations sensible.

Mains-powered pumps give you that constant, set-and-forget flow, and they will run after dark and on grey days. The trade is that they need an outdoor power point, and that is where you stop being a DIYer, which brings us to the safety bit.

Powering it safely

Any mains-powered feature has to run off a proper outdoor power point on an RCD-protected circuit, and installing that point is work for a licensed electrician. Water and mains electricity sitting a metre apart is exactly the situation the rules exist for, so do not run a lead out a window or daisy-chain power boards to reach the spot. Plug-in solar kits and genuine low-voltage setups are a different story and are fine to set up yourself, but the moment fixed mains wiring is involved, that is a sparky’s job, full stop.

Placement and the top-up reality

Two practical things decide whether you enjoy the feature or resent it. First, evaporation is real, especially through an Australian summer. A small feature in full sun can drop its level noticeably in a few hot days, and if the pump sucks air because the reservoir ran low, it can burn out. So site it where you will actually notice the level, and get in the habit of a quick top-up. Second, think about leaf litter and shade. Under a big deciduous tree you will be forever fishing leaves out, and shade cloth of a different kind, the natural sort, drops muck straight into the water.

Keeping it clean and running

Recirculating features are low fuss, but they are not no-fuss.

• Keep the water up: check the level every few days in summer so the pump always has water to draw.
• Rinse the pump inlet: a clogged inlet screen is the number one reason a fountain slows to a dribble. A quick rinse under the tap sorts it.
• Stop it going green: keep the feature out of all-day direct sun where you can, and empty and wipe it out every so often rather than letting sludge build up.
• Break the mosquito cycle: moving water rarely breeds mozzies, but a feature switched off for weeks over winter can. Either keep it ticking over or drain it down when it is not in use.

Get those basics right and a water feature is one of the cheapest bits of atmosphere you can add to a backyard. If you are thinking about how it fits alongside pumps, ponds and the rest of your outdoor space, have a read of our guide to water in the Australian garden.