So we’ve been looking for a simple water feature for quite some time now. The closest I can find at a reasonable price are these:
The below are in my price range, but a bit cheese, if you know what I mean.
I like the below, but are a bit picey:
http://www.liquidartfountains.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=21
http://www.spiritelements.com/ProductDetail.aspx?c=1149&p=1496
Anybody got any tips, leads, DIY instructions…
kinda hard to say with out seeing where its going to be-and what its like around it-do you have a mordern style of design to where u call home?? I umm donty like # 3. it looks the most realistic as a rock but then again looks too wierd because it looks just like a rock and is shooting up water…i would not choose that.unless you are going to get like 3 of them and have them around in the same area-I think numer 2 and the last one work the best as being solo-like they could just work by themselves in the surrounding-they have that type of domince in them.
I wouldn’t get any of them and get a nice waterfountain that can go indoors and that way it has a peaceful sound indoors and maybe a couple long leaf plants and you are set-no i am not an interior designer but i watch trading spaces on tlc with my girlfriend so much this summer that i am sure i could do my thang–with 900 bucks-ahaha
anyway will try and get you some links if you are interested in some indoor ones-I think that would be better—
cool
Yo… design your own?
In the pursuit of keeping my shop afloat (between paying clients) I spent some time manufacturing “garden products” which I marketed locally at a high-end nursery.
I used a material that has been around for many years. It’s called hydro-tuffa. It is nothing more than portland cement mix with peat moss added to it. $2.50 will get you a hundred pounds of “post mix” at the hardware store; another $4.00 and you’ll have 2 cubic feet of peat moss.
You can vary the proportions of cement/peat moss to give the finished part more or less texture. The “texture” is created when the peat moss starts to deteriorate in the weather leaving the surfaced pitted. So what you have is a natural concrete/stone coloration with an artificially weathered surface.
You can buy dry color pigments to add to the cement: terra cotta, brown, black, moss green, etc. Add them to the water before mixing, or make a “wash” out of them an selectively brush on where you want it.
Molds can be fabricated out of plywood or, depending upon how “stiff” you make the mix, you can free-form slabs of this stuff and glue them together with epoxy.
i.e. I found some big, nicely shaped, polyethylene tubs and used them as molds, hand forming this material to the inside.
The older this stuff gets, the better it looks. Wash it down with buttermilk, and moss will start to grow on it immediately.
Too bad I don’t possess a digital camera I have piece outside the shop door.
well… it HAS been a year of two… the stuff’s called HYPERtufa
i avoid Ebay like the plague, but I found this through a google search.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=20505&item=4357991795&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
the recipe is as I described it.
Thanks dude. I figure I could cast a part with a pvc pipe imbeded in it, then stick it in a trough with a pump and fill that with river rocks.
What do you think?
The problem is my wife is all up on this rock bubbling (the neighbor’s got one) with a hole drilled in it, and I can’t find a large enough rock, drilled out, for under $350, seem’s expensive for a freakin rock.
you’re gonna want to just get a big ol’ rock and get all Noguchi on it
here are some fakes
may i suggest the “BIG MOE”
http://www.midwestinternetsales.com/landscaperocks.htm?referrer=googFakeRocks
wow, a real rock is cheaper.
Hey yo! Just take a drive east to the desert and bring a rock home, then get some power tools and start hecking away!
Drilling rocks won’t be easy. I’ve tried to drill through a shell and it’s hard!
Well, if the Significant Other specifies that it be rock, then it should be rock.
Lava rock would be the easiest to drill through. It would also be easier to move around. A landscape material supply company might have them up your way. They do down here
They’re starting to sell hollow boulders down here too. They are actually a sandstone-colored concrete cast into a mold taken off of a real boulder, and flat on the bottom so they look like they’re embedded. Pretty good size too: the largest arre about 4’x3’x2’. About a two or three inch wall thickness and weigh about 200 pounds (which is a helluva lot less than the would be if they were real rock), two guys can move one … cough up about $200.
Unless you’re just interested in it as a project and figure in your time spent messing around with it, $200 is pretty cheap.
And you’re off the hook with the Missus.
got it sorted out-
Went to a regional home and garden show to scope out some ideas. Saw a nice tastefull fountain in a “concept garden”, basicly a low 12"hx 24 x 24 rock with a hole drilled in it with water spilling into a bunch of river rocks.
went to a local rock quarry retailer, picked out a cool rick with a dished in flat surface, having the guy drill in a hole, got a bunch of river rocks, got a pump kit at Lowes. The hole thing should come to about $110.
going to be sweet, thanks for the advice.
How are you gonna show your neighbors up with a little pebble like that?
You shoulda gone with BIG MOE
seriously though, post some pictures when it’s done
my yard is 17’x31’…big Moe would be iconic 
OK
after a few back breaking Saterdays burring power lines under grass, digging a huge hole for a basin, finding and buying a big rock and getting it inplace, this is where I’m at. Still need some more river rocks, maybe a Japanese maple behind it I’m thinking:
(dog for scale… and because he wouldn’t move out of the shade)
yo, it looks great. Simple, refined, and not cheesy or fake like just about everything that’s on the market. I really dig the way the water drains through smaller rocks so that you don’t see the reservoir.
Cool chair as well. Who is the designer/manufacturer?
I believe the chair is vintage Ikea.
Arhh… the grass is green. Just snow and mud here.
Yes the chair is classic IKEA approx 2003, $19… and it was 75 and sunny when I took those photos a few days ago, enjoy the snow east coasters 
Thanks, though. I still have some work to do. Thinking about bringing the river rocks all the way back to the fence in a big arc so they surround whatever tree we plant behind the water rock. Not all together sure though.
