The fun with the waterfall and entrance lights continues.
In brief, I expect someone to be out to restore the lights sometime this week. I have no ETA on the waterfall at the moment.
Lights
We had a broken wire that took out the lights along the right side of the waterfall. It’s not clear how it got broken. The landscaper, who performed initial diagnostics, felt it was best to cut power to the entire circuit to ensure no one got shocked if wandering around the waterfall.
Waterfall
The waterfall pump is under warranty from the repair made back in the spring. As such, Carolina Fountain was out to do initial diagnostic on the latest failure. They could find no problem and suggested the problem was in the wiring. We had an electrician look at it last week. The electrician checked the wiring and found no problem, despite the shoddy electrical work by the original installers. It is now back in Carolina Fountain’s court to continue diagnostics.
Waterfall 
So, is there anything new about the waterfall? Why can’t they get it working?
Monty,
The initial delay has been in attempting to get Carolina Fountain to honor the warranty on the pump and work they performed during pump replacement in May 2010. As it turns out, the warranty doesn’t appear to be worth much at all and Carolina Fountain doesn’t appear to want to accept any responsibility for the poor reliability.
Given that the waterfall has averaged about $3000 per year over the last three years, the board has decided that we need to meet with the community to determine the path we take next. We have two viable options–have a new pump installed or replace the waterfall entirely by having a landscape architect/designer propose a new landscape design that is more reliable.
We’re currently in the process of getting prepared for a meeting with the community.
Within the past few weeks, MJS located another company that has the experience necessary to maintain the waterfall. This company indicates that the pump that Carolina Fountain installed is not properly sized for the size of the waterfall. We will be obtaining a quote to have it replaced with the correct size.
Within the last week, MJS sent the contact info for several landscape architects/designers. We will be meeting with them soon, checking references, and getting proposals we can bring to the meeting.
Once we have the information, we will be scheduling a community meeting to discuss and have the community vote on the best option.