The fountain begins

I’m trying to use positive thoughts to bring in spring weather, however, the 9”+ of snow that we have received over the last week or so is arguing otherwise.  Undeterred, I started working on our fountain project, thinking about spring the whole time.  Here is what I am envisioning for the finished product: 

Once it is done, all you should see is the pot, sitting in a bed of colorful stone pebbles. The water will fill up the pot and then over flow.  The water will drop down and pass through the stones, down into the basin. A small pump will recirculate the water from the basin back up to the pot. This should hopefully provide a nice splashing sound, while being very low maintenance since the basin will be covered with rocks.  All we should have to do is top off the water in the basin and clean off any leaves that fall on the rocks. (that is my theory, anyways)

The pot already had a drain hole in the bottom of it, so I used that opening for my water supply line.  Of course, that hole was much bigger than the elbow that I am using to feed the water, so I had to block off the rest of the opening to make the pot hold water.  I cut a piece of plastic to cover the hole and attached it to the pot with a couple layers of fiberglass.  For those of you who don’t know, there isn’t much that smells worse than fiberglass.  I would typically do this outside, but the sub-freezing temps forced me to do it inside the garage.  Even with the garage door and window cracked for ventilation, the smell was almost unbearable. 

The cold temps in the garage also seemed to be slowing down the fiberglass curing process, so it took longer than usual to harden.  In addition to attaching the elbow to the bottom of the pot, I also attached 3 small PVC fittings to the bottom of the pot to create “feet” to hold the pot up high enough to make room for the elbow.  Since the inside of the pot wasn’t glazed, I also needed to come up with a way to hide the inside of the pot or paint the inside of it (right now it is just clay colored once you get about 2" below the rim).  I decided against painting it and decided to mount a tray of stones at the about 1.5” below the top of the pot, which should block off the view down into the pot while still allowing the water to flow through.  I mounted a 2” PVC fitting in the bottom of the pot and I will add a section of 2” pipe as a riser to support this tray. 

Now that I have the pot internals figured out (I still need to test it to see if my fiberglass work holds water), I need to turn my attention to where this fountain is going.  My plan is to dig a hole in our backyard near the patio area and insert a liner.  I will place a concrete block (or something similar) into the liner to act as a base for the pot, raising it up to the top of the liner.  I’m planning on using a  grate from a round  charcoal grill (or something similar) between the pot and the concrete block to support the stone that will cover the basin.   I've been watching to see if any neighbors throw out their old grills on trash day, but no luck yet.  I might just have to buy a new grill grate.  As you can see from the “or something similar” comments, this is still a design in progress.

Here is the bottom of the pot after I fiberglassed the 1/2" elbow for the water and the PVC feet to raise the pot up so it doesn't stand on the elbow.  It isn't pretty, but you won't see this part once it is done.