How to build a indoor water wall spillway

This is the transcription of my voice in this video:

In this video, I want to show you the overflow channel or you can also call it spillway or gutter, I use to produce water walls. Actually this system I have used probably more than 150 times, and from my opinion, it's the best one because you can make a very good water distribution so that your surface, where you run the water over, is going to be floated completely. Because this is actually the biggest challenge to get a water film which will cover the whole plate. You can use a glass plate or you can use a stone plate or a stainless steel plate but it's always the most important thing is to get the water harmonically distributed on that surface. For that reason, I'm using this so called overflow channel and I'm going to show you also a couple of videos about this overflow channel in real life. But let's start with this construction drawing so that I can explain you the main elements of it.

So first of all, it was until today, the best way to use 6 centimeters here in depth and 6 centimeters in height to get a good water distribution. By the way, you don't see any entering points for the water because this example shows an overflow channel which is going to be filled from above. So because if you use a glass plate as a room divider or if you use a glass plate in front of a wall, you don't want to see the pipes, tubes and hoses, behind the glass plate which is transparent. So this is why we would come with the water hose or pipe or tube from above. Then we would create a sub distribution inside this overflow channel usually I use 25 millimetres diameter PVC tube with some holes in it. The cool thing is if you use such a PVC tube is that you can adjust the water streams pretty precise so that you get a full covered plate where the water flows over.

Okay, so before I show you the videos how this works in real life, again, the basics. So 6 centimeter in depth, then 6 centimeter high. Then in this example, we have a 10 millimeter glass plate but the distance in here is 13 millimeters. Because we would always have a little buffer because you know if the overflow channel isn't welded precisely or if the glass plate has a bow, it's always good to have a little buffer here. So this is why we have 13 millimeters from this edge of the overflow channel until the back of it so that the 3 millimeters are left. Also, I'm always calculating 5 millimeters buffer in the height. What you can see here pretty good is that it's not a 90 degree angle here. This is because if we would have a 90 degree angle here then this side of the overflow channel would have complete contact to the glass plate and then we could have some capillary effects. Which I actually really have faced in the past. This is why we always make here 87 degrees instead of 90 so that the water does not get up here by the capillary effect and then move to the back and then go down at the back of the overflow, go down at the back of the glass plate. And then maybe find its way here at the bottom of the overflow channel which would be then, yeah, bad. Because we don't want any water to go anywhere else than here on the glass plate.

So 87 degrees here, 3 millimeters buffer, 6 centimeter deep, 6 centimeters high. By the way you can reduce this a little bit. I've also I think made it with 5 centimeters and 5… But this is a proven tested system which works much more easy than if you have a more narrow channel. Then I also go high here 4 centimeter. So this is 10 centimeters, which means that above the water level, I still would have 4 centimeters for protecting the water to go and anywhere else or to be able to screw some holes in the back if I want to fix the overflow channel at the back of a wall. But you can use the system also to fix the overflow channel at the ceiling which you will see in the example video I'm going to show you right now. And just one last basic important thing which you can see here is that this part has been sharpened, because what we don't want is that we have an edge here of the front element. If you would not sharp off the edge then the water would flow over here and might get no contact to the surface of the plate and then the water would drop in a free fall. So this is why we sharpen this part of the overflow channel so that we have here a very sharp ending and then the water can get some momentum and close touch to the plate immediately after it leaves the overflow channel. So now let me show you some video.

Okay, here you can see the overflow channel when we're doing the testing and you can see that the water runs very nicely at the front of the glass plate and not at the back.

Okay, here you can see the overflow channel from the other side. As you can see we have constructed it to be able to fix it at the ceiling.

Here you can see the sub distribution and you can see the nice, very nice, waves which are created across the glass plate, and the whole plate is nicely covered with water.

What you maybe can see is that we have a little bit more speed at the sides because you know water tends to get together in the middle. So this is why we set the sub distribution in a way that we have more water, a little bit more water, at the sides so that we don't get the effect of dry zones at the left and at the right side. So this is one way to use this system, the overflow channel. You can also… There are a couple of variations so that you can use it also for stone water wall or if you have a non-transparent plate or a surface here then you could fill the overflow channel or the spillway or the gutter, however you want to call it, from below. You also can feel the water from the sides. You can fill it from one side or from both sides. So there are a couple of variations how you can use it but, yes, in the last 11 years of producing more than 180 waterfall projects, I mainly use this system because it's very reliable. I'm using stainless steel which is stable and which can be produced very very accurate. So if you were going to build a water wall, I would recommend you to use this overflow channel system.

If you want to learn more, I would be excited to see you in the Wawazen Waterwall School. There is a complete free course and there many many other possibilities how you can learn to build different kinds of waterfalls, how to automate them etc. etc. So I hope you liked this one. Please share it if you find it was a good video, and I hope to see you soon in the Wawazen Waterwall School.

Thank you.