The Water Feature

Anyone who has been a regular reader of James Lilek's The Bleat knows about the battles he's been having with the water feature that he had built in his backyard - apparently by an outfit that had never built one before. He's had nothing but trouble with it. Lawsuits to follow.

Well, I'm also a sucker for water features, and today we added a new one in the backyard (to go with the fountain by our front door and the fountain on our upstairs deck). I didn't have it built, but ordered it from Target when it finally went on sale at a price we could stand. It was apparently a successful sale, because the guy that delivered ours delivered 9 others the same day.

I was a little worried about the whole process because it's made out of formed concrete and weighs a ton...well actually half a ton. The delivery guy told us the whole thing weighed 950 pounds. Although it's in a number of pieces, the main bowl must weigh 400+ pounds all by itself. Thankfully, a couple of helpful neighbors stepped in and after some creative engineering that would have made the ancient Egyptians proud, we got the beast into positipon in the back.

Once we got it in place, we only had to make two trips to the hardware store to finish the set-up. The first was to get a longer water line since the one that came with the fountain wasn't long enough for our configuration, and the second for larger hose clamps since it would have taken a miracle of engineering to make the ones work that came with it.

Bottom line - it works! After being as sick as I was yesterday, I probably shouldn't have tried a job like this today, but we got it done and now we can sit back and enjoy it. Here's the finished product:


James - try Target next time. I think you'll have a lot more success.