Spring is in the air. No, it is not exactly here but I think that we are past the worst of winter. A water feature that I purchased for my wife’s birthday a couple of years ago sat idly on the deck. I know for a lot of people, the sound of water brings serenity. Not me, but she wanted it on.

She came in frantic saying that it was broken. I feared that freezing weather might break the glazed clay structure. I had drained all the water, but that wasn’t enough as the base had split. I felt bad because nerves about upcoming biopsy was getting the best of her. Sure, we can replace it but that isn’t going to calm nerves the night before a hospital stay and potentially life altering information.

Back in the late 1990s there was a trend to to have these small, table-top, serenity fountains. We had one as well (from here on out, I will call it mine). It had sat in storage for years (and years). I remembered that we had it, so I sprung into action.

The one I had was home built, meaning the pump was purchased separately from the bowl and the bedrock and the focal rock. We had used a piece of bamboo to conceal some PVC tube from the pump and it never quite flowed the way we wanted it. After a month or so of running, the bamboo would break and then I would run around and try to find a suitable replacement. To top it off, I filled the bowl with aquarium gravel and that took all of the volume in the bowl so it was always running dry.

Being much older and wiser (and tool richer) now, I thought I will drill a hole in the focal rock for the water to come out of. Forget the bamboo and the tubing and it will look a lot nicer too. The roughly and poorly adhered slices of slate cemented together broke in three pieces. but I did get a through hole in two of the pieces. So, I forced the PVC tubing through the two so that they would roughly look like they belonged.

I have some work to do still. But, you can see it is working and I think it looks better than it did before. I want to put some hardware cloth down for the rocks to sit on. I tried a couple of steel rods that I had with some window screen over the top. It kind of worked, but I didn’t have time to wait for serenity.

Changes to make.

  1. Weld up a steel super structure.
  2. Purchase hardware cloth (wire mesh) and cut to fit the bowl
  3. Layer the window screen on top of the hardware cloth
  4. Adhere the two pieces of focal rock back together and place
  5. Finally, add the base rock
  6. Maybe, embellish a little more with craft store or aquarium finds
  7. And now we are back in the 1990s, but much better

End Your Programming Routine: This fountain does not make the noise of the outdoor fountain. But, I think it has the potential to look nice and it does take it out of storage. I can also put it in a place that my wife can enjoy it while going through treatment even if winter continues.