Training: Genesis

Hello. This is Chuck from Advanced Waterfall Systems. Today, we are gonna show you how to install one of our smaller AWS systems on our display pool. It's a foot and a half high, eight foot wide, single waterfall. But today, that's what we're focused on.

I'm gonna show you guys step by step how to install this simple Genesis kit, okay, with two guys, no equipment, minimal skills. Right? So right now, is 03:39PM because that's how we roll. We start stuff at 04:00 in the afternoon. That's when we start.

We're gonna be done before 05:30. So we're gonna get rolling. The guys are gonna start the process. So let me show how this goes. Alright.

So we're building this Genesis waterfall kit on our display pool. Okay. So we kinda had footings poured for this. So what you're seeing here is a video of the installation of a concrete footing for your Genesis waterfall kit. So if it was a renovation, you take out the coping.

If it was new, you would either install the coping afterwards or leave eight foot. So this vinyl liner pool has a concrete collar that we put in because we're installing waterfalls on it. If you were doing this on a vinyl liner or a fiberglass pool, you wanna pour a footing. You wanna get down 30 inches minimum or blow your frost line with some tubes and pour a pad. Now you're gonna see that this feature essentially covers about a foot, and then in the center, where the waterfall is, it goes out to two foot and then goes back in.

So if you're pouring a footing, a minimum of foot on the left and right, and then a two foot area, like a two by two area in the center for the two base pieces to sit on what you're gonna see. Now here, this was a display. So we just added these cinder blocks, and these cinder blocks have a concrete footing underneath them. So they're supported properly, and we left a gap because the plumbing line is gonna go right through there. But, again, you're doing this.

Every situation is different. You cut your footing or you put the plumbing in the footing when you're building it because the center of the Genesis is hollow and is designed for the waterline to come up the middle. Alright. So this is ready to rock and roll. The boys are gonna start setting the pieces.

Alright. So when your Genesis waterfall kit gets delivered, it would look something like this. It would get shipped, so it will be wrapped thoroughly. This comes with everything you need. Right?

It comes with documentation. This is the exact layout of this, and everything's numbered. This shows you how it's built. It's waterfall by numbers. It shows you how it's built.

All the numbers are there. So if you can read and you can put stuff together, like two goes to two, you can build it. Everything's numbered, so you're good there. It comes with all the plumbing fittings you need. It comes with different attachments or different, reducers.

It comes with the plumbing. Right here, you have a preplumb, Grotto waterfall top. It sits on top. Got your two pieces that are the base, all the side rocks. It comes with the dye.

It comes with everything you need to build this except sand, water, tools, and two guys with half a brain. Doesn't come with cement either. Everything else it comes with. So it comes right in the ass. So nothing on this pallet weighs more than a 170 pounds.

K. So two guys can move every piece with a hand truck, and this is a basic hand truck. But we've done these jobs where this was in the this was in the driveway, at the top of the driveway, and we brought all the pieces in one by one into the backyard, across the grass, over patios, goes in and out no problem. Walking these pieces in by hand is not a big deal. Now this one's closer, but it doesn't really matter.

You don't need anything special. Just regular hand tools, and you're good to go. He's marking the center of the feature, and then he's more then he measured it how long the base pieces are, and he marked the edges. Right? So he knows exactly where to locate the base piece.

This will be the front. This will be the back. It'll get bolted together and cemented. So as you can see, the guys are putting in like a mortar bed right there. One to two inches of cement, kind of leveling it all out, and then they're gonna sit the piece right on top.

One thing you'll notice, they're not putting cement really close to the edge. They're putting the cement a couple inches Well, why? Because when you put the piece on, it's gonna smush the cement out. So that would make it a cleaner build and less cement would fall into the pool. Not the end of the world if it falls into the pool, just brush it out and brush it into the returns or vacuum it out.

You just don't wanna leave it on there overnight because it might stain the liner or stain the plaster or or something like that. So it's okay if it falls in. Just wanna brush it loose pretty quickly so it doesn't set and stain. So you can see what the boys are doing. They set the first piece, then they set the back piece, and they kinda tapped it level with the first piece.

Now you're gonna see there's brackets on the inside, and the goal is to line the brackets up. There's one on the set on the left and one on the right, so you can bolt it all together. So you could see they bolted the two pieces together, so now it creates one solid base all the way around. And the next step is the guys are gonna run plumbing, and then they're going to put the cap on. Put some cement around here and set the cap.

So when you set this cap, you take this cap off the pallet. You see how the boys set it. Right? They set it, lift it off the ground. What you don't wanna do is drop this cap on the ground because you damage the inlet.

If you drop this on the hard ground, it's gonna it's gonna damage this. So you can see what they did. We use foam a lot to keep it off the ground, but anything you could do to keep this connection, protected so it doesn't get damaged. Right? In this case, you could see they just kinda kept it like that so it doesn't get damaged.

Right? So that's gonna be really important when you're moving stuff around. Don't damage the plumbing. So the boys are setting the cap. K?

They're gonna tie in the plumbing. But what I wanted to show you was, see this little lip right here underneath the fall? We kind of glue in this little lip, and it stops the water from rolling backwards. Right? When the water's coming off the waterfall, it stops it from rolling back and getting onto the face.

So it's a protective kind of thing to keep the water going forward. Right? That's one little detail we did on this. You're gonna see once they get the plumbing set, they're gonna drop the cap back down, then they're gonna level the cap to make sure it's level side to side, especially here where the water runs across it. So this built in sheer descent has an inch and a half fitted.

So we reduced it down to three quarter. Alright? So we provide you with a three quarter inch plumbing and the and the reducers to get the inch and a half. The reason we do that is two reasons. Number one, you don't need more than three quarters to supply this 12 inch sheer descent.

Not a lot of water needed. Right? Number one. Number two, the three quarter is more flexible. So when it comes to trying to get the the piping curled up and bent inside this tight little center, it makes it easier.

Right? We've tried bigger pipe. It was harder to turn and bend. Right? So in this case, we're gonna come out the back, and we're gonna tie into here.

But you might be in a situation where the plumbing line comes up the middle and that the bends might be tighter. So it's a lot easier to deal with this three quarter inch pipe to get it to all work. Okay? That's the reason we use this material and why we give you the reducers. So you can see what the boys are doing.

They're putting cement all the way around, and the cement's a little thick. Alright? You don't wanna have it loose and sloppy and muddy and all that because it'll 'll fall all out and make a mess. So this is kinda like stone mud where it's, like, kinda thick. So you can see what he's doing.

Put it all the way around. He's putting the perfect amount. Enough to level it, but not too much where it's squirting all over the place. So this is coming along nice. And, again, not too much cement close to the edge.

So when you push the stone down, it doesn't squish out. You can always add some cement in the front. That's what we're gonna do at the end. We're gonna point it with a little bit of cement in the front and above the liner. But don't overdo it with the cement.

Make the cement thick. And remember, follow the mixing instructions. We give you very thorough instructions on how much dye, how much sand, how much cement to use to get a consistent mix and a consistent color. Right? Because these features are already cemented.

Right? So we use a certain dye mix in building the structure, and we want you to match it when you install So the idea is to have the mortar be consistent. So the boys are installing the cap. There's a little bit of discretion, and you wanna pay attention. The amount of overhang that you put on this, there's some play.

K? You can push it forward. You can push it backward. Now what you wanna do is look at your photograph, and the photograph shows rocks back here. So you almost wanna dry fit the rocks first, and then push the cap back to the rocks.

So you don't end up with a big gap. Right? If you have this too far forward, then when you put the rocks in on the back, there's gonna be a big gap. So you wanna look at the photos, get your back rocks. They're numbered.

Right? Seven and eight. The back rocks are numbered seven and eight, so you can't make a mistake. Rock goes there. Rock goes there.

Put it how you want it. Push this back into it, and then you know it's gonna fit tight. Another thing that they guys did is they kinda squared it up. You wanna make sure it's not, like, crooked. Right?

That it's at the front of the waterfall squared up to the front of the, the base. Right? So the guys did that, and you wanna make sure it's centered. You probably wanna put some eyes on it from across the pool and make sure that it's centered. You got the similar overhang here.

We're gonna fill this with cement, and it's kinda squared up. And as you can see, what the guys did is they pushed this back. You can see they put the rocks in, they pushed this back, and now they're gonna cement everything in, and everything will be nice. Again, line up the numbers. Easy peasy.

So you can see the boys are using a rubber mallet to kinda tap things in place, level things, tap them in, and that's a good idea. A big heavy rubber mallet is good. You do not want to use a steel sledgehammer. Okay? It'll damage the rock.

Always a rubber mallet. The boys are pointing using these really thin trails. Right? And they're using a sponge, but they're actually using a wet sponge, and the sponge is actually being used to clean the rock. We're not using the sponge to smooth out the mortar.

It actually looks a lot different. When you use a sponge to smooth out mortar, it looks very different than when you use a trowel. It looks a lot, cleaner when you use a, a trowel. You see a sponge, but the mortar joints are being pointed with a with a very thin trowel, and then the only place they're using the sponge is to clean the rock. So again, everybody's got their own way to do things.

This is the way we do it. See how clean the rock is here? We'll leave that joint like that. Finish like that. Base is in.

Cap is in. Plumbing is in. Waterfall is leveled. We're moving right along, and it is 04:24PM. So we are less than an hour.

We're, like, forty minutes in, and now the next piece is we're gonna set the side rocks here and the side rocks there. Moving right along. Rocking and rolling as I said. So the boys are starting to set up the side rocks, but again, it's waterfall by numbers. It's real simple.

You got a one and a one, and the rock that goes next to it has guess what number? Yeah. You got it. One. One one one.

Put it next to each other, and then the same thing for pretty much everything. Right? Line up the numbers. The rock to go here is gonna be four. Four on four, seven on seven, eight on eight.

Real simple. So you can see what Javier is doing. Probably the most important part of what he just did is the weight that he brought to the rock to the edge of the pool. You notice he didn't just roll right up on the edge of the pool and, like, dump it. Right?

He set the rock a foot back, and he delicately walked the rock to the front where it just delicately touched the edge of the pool. This way, you set it in place like he did, and you don't end up dropping the rock in the pool. You don't wanna do that. Take your time. Set the rock nice.

Got some cement in there. Like I said, not too much cement. Okay. Enough to get a water bed, but you don't want it spilling into the pool. So if you want a safe clean job, walk the rock to the edge, set it back, and don't use too much cement.

And then once he gets the other rock in, then we'll go back and point everything. It'll be beautiful. If you'll notice what Javi did, he dry fitted the rock, and he kind of marked where the rock's gonna go. So now he knows where to put the cement. Makes there's a little mark with the trail and where the rock's gonna end, then when he put so he knows where to put the cement.

And this way, when the rock goes in, you don't have all this extra cement and making the job look sloppy. You go. Waterfall by numbers. Easy peasy. He is walking that rock to the edge of the pool.

Okay? Very delicately walking it to the edge of the pool piece by piece so it doesn't fall into the pool. So take your time, pay attention, don't do anything stupid in to get this rock in place. One suggestion I would have, and it's what we did here, is text the photograph to your guy text the photograph of this Genesis waterfall kit to your guys building it so they have it on their phone, so they can reference it, so they don't lose the paper or leave it at Wawa or anything like that. If it's on their phone, they will have it.

They can pick it up. They can look at it and reference it at any point during the build. Okay. So all the pieces are in and the cement work is in. It's not a 100%.

You still gotta do some pointing and clean up, but the overall structure is built and the cement is in. Right? So it is 04:50PM. So that's an hour and eleven minutes. An hour and eleven minutes since we started, and you're gonna see the guys are gonna point everything and finish everything up.

So every plumbing situation is different on every project, but, you know, is this like I said, pretty simple. We got an inch and a half plumbing line there, and we're gonna just glue it right in to the one inch or the three quarter inch line that comes with it, and it comes with a reducer, so you have the fittings that you need to do it. So it'll be a simple one connection, then it'll be ready to go. Okay? The guys are finishing up all the point you can see in here.

They did all the cement work on the backside. This particular situation, we're gonna mulch all this and landscape it so it's very natural looking, but you could put a patio or concrete back here. Either way would work depending on how you're, what you got going on in the pool. Finishing up, looking good. Once we get this tied in, then we will be ready to turn this baby on.

So you can see Manuela was using that small triangular trowel to smooth out so it gives it a nice slick kind of sealed mortar joint so it's very tight to the rocks. You can see what he's doing there. So it's a combination of that trail and that very skinny trail. So there you have it. A completed AWS system, little less than two hours, two guys, no specialty skills, tools, or equipment for an AWS system.

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