DIY Water Wall Problem - WRONG Water Additive Destroys Waterfilm

This is the transcription of my voice in this video:

So, when you build a water wall or an indoor waterfall then you want to use a water additive against germs and algae, but you should take care and be very careful to test the water additive, because it might happen that your water additive is changing the surface tension of the water and then you can have two effects, which are pretty bad.

One effect can be that  you will not be able to create a water film across the whole glass plate, like for example in this water wall. Here you can see we have a very nice complete water film covering the whole glass plate with harmonically distributed waves. So if you use the wrong water additive and increase the water tension of the water then you get such streams which then do not cover the complete glass plate and they're also pretty loud and they create splashing.

Then the opposite of that is if you have a water additive against algae and germs which is destroying the tension, the surface tension of the water, then you might have a complete coverage of the surface, but you won't see any waves at all. I have had this once, I have delivered water wall at a customer's place and I have had a new water additive which I did not test before.

So, actually if you do not use a water additive and if you have a clean glass plate then your waves will be distributed by themselves, because water, if it does not have any additives inside, it has actually the perfect tension to create waves by itself as you can see here. But in that example, when I delivered the water wall and after I have put the water additive inside you couldn't see any waves anymore, because the water lost its tension. And, you know, it makes no sense to create a water wall if you don't see the water and actually you only see the water if you have waves.

So, you know, if we would look at it from from this side and if this would be the glass plate, we would have those three extremes. So, ...or let's say we would have three stages.

The one stage is if the water has too much surface tension then it gets together and it does not cover the surface.

The normal natural way would be that the water is covering the complete surface and we have beautiful waves.

And the third stage which can happen if you use the wrong water additive is that the water's surface tension is broken completely and you don't have any waves and you just have plain water film moving down your surface, which then is pretty bad because, yeah, makes no sense to run a water wall if you don't see the water. And you do not see the water if you don't have waves. Waves will occur naturally without water additive and so then, if you use a water additive, only use those where you know that they do not change the water surface tension or test them.

Because many water additives which are made for fountains, garden fountains and indoor fountains might not be good for water walls, because when you have a water wall it's very important that you are able to create this water film, which then will display beautiful water waves. And with other water features, where you have dropping or splashing effects, you don't need a water film and so it might be that the regular water additive which you want to use in a normal fountain will not work with a water wall.

So, be careful when using a water additive, because, you know, the dilemma was that after I have put in the wrong water additive I had to remove the whole water and I had to clean the water wall in order to remove the rest of the water additive, otherwise I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have be able to get it running in a normal way. So, if you don't want to have this frustrating experience, which I had, because took me almost one hour to remove the bad water, the water with the bad water additive and then fill it up with new water etc. etc.

So, if you want to avoid that, take care and test the water additive or ask the manufacturer if it's changing the surface tension to be sure.