Installing a Fountain.

Doghouse Riley

When I closed our koi pool  after thirty odd years  due to a serious leak in the liner which would have been a huge job to replace, we decided we would like a fountain as we were used to the sound of running water in the garden.

There was an ideal location for it where the  pump sump at the far end for the filter in a room in the garage  had been.

There was an an electrictal supply to the sump for both the filter pump and the drain pump that pumped waste water to a house drain after purging  under the kitchen window via a pipe under the path and patio.

The most difficult job was finding a decent fountain.

So we went to Bents reputedly the biggest and best garden centre in Europe.

For us it was a disappointment, several modern "arty" types which wouldn't go in our garden.

The only traditional looking fountains were plastic and naff looking.

Trawling the internet I found Massarelli's site. They had a big selection of "stone" (concrete) fountains and they made one we thought suitable. The problem was they're in America.

Fortunately they had an agent that sold them in the UK. They ordered a container load each year of different fountains and as luck would have it they were expecting it the following week and they had one of the model we'd chosen. So I orded it just having seen the photo.

It arrived within a couple of weeks in a huge cardboard box on a pallet. It was wrapped inside with heavy jute coffee bean sacks. There were even a few  coffee beans in them!

Biggest problem was lugging all 71k of it through the door in the side fence  next to the patio and up to the location.

I'd already found this circular stepping stone in B&Q which I cemented in position, having first drilled a hole in it to be able to pass the cable through.

Of course this was one of the 240v cables  which had beern to power the pumps which I'd disconnected at the other end. So when the pump arrived I cut off its cable with the pump and  adapter and connected them to the end of the cable to the pool which would then be only 12v.

This was plugged in to one of the sockets below the garage consumer unit controlled by the switches behind the lounge curtains. Its transformer is one of those next to the consumer unit.

The other is for the fairy lights on the pergola. It's less complicated than it looks.

It means of coursde we can turn the fountain with its own light on and not any of the other lights in the garden, controlled by the other three switches in the lounge.

Having dragged the fountain on to its proposed location  I made up some mortar and a mixture of cement dye and paint to get a reasonable match for the fountain to build up the plinth.

Maintainance is quite straightforward, just a case of checking the little pump  doesn't get blocked by a leaf every few weeks and fior cleaning there's a rubber bung in a drain in the base of the fountain where you can empty it any time you wish. I just scrub it out while it's draining the water just end up on the bed next to it.

 

With the little border at this end of what was the pool, I removed some of the double row of big rocks that sat on the pool collar to make into two, to give access to what is now our "rose patio."

Fortunately for me, my wife thinks, "It doesn't look too bad."