Beginner Gardening: Ideas for DIY fountains?, 1 by Happenstance

Happenstance wrote:
Hi Terry -

I have a couple of fountains, both caste concrete and they will forever have to live where they were originally placed because of the weight. DH and I managed the smaller one on the front porch, but it took 4 gorillas from a local nursery to move the big fountain into the backyard. It was the first thing that went into the garden 5 years ago. It's never moving!

There are lots of resin fountains appearing here in CA, some at home centers are fairly reasonable in price ($130-250), they are all fairly small and not very tall. You didn't say how big you were thinking of going.

A couple of things I have learned with my fountains (ours run 24/7 all year).

The smaller the fountain the more work it is (I have an additional fountain that is a concrete bowl about 20" in diameter on a wrought iron stand, that I no longer run because it requires water/cleaning just about every other day): Evaporation rate is higher (we don't get any rain from Mar-Oct); Algae growth is higher in a shallow fountain; smaller pumps require cleaning more often.

For the larger fountains made from resin, the prices I have seen reflect about the same pricing as the concrete ones. They can be moved more easily, but still must be drained before moving them.

Depending on your situation, cleaning a big fountain can be a big job. I use the built in 1/2" drain on the large fountain in the back garden, but must remove the rest of the water and scrubbed out muck with a shop vac.

An added point of interest is that we occasionally have to redo the wiring to the pump because the pocket gophers love to dig around and loosen some of the connections which come from the power source for our pond. :-)

Try Googling with "fountain resin"......a lot of info and sites come up, some with better prices than other and some with free shipping.
http://www.google.com/search?q=fountain resin&hl=en&lr=&ie=U...

I have also wondered how the resin ones will stand up over time. I have quite a few of the large containers made from the poly/resin mixtures and some are beginning to show their age and feel slightly dry/crispy/crumbly on the rims after 5 years in the heat and sun.

This is an image of the larger fountain taken last year (about 4' in diameter at the base):