How to Build a Water Fountain With Cinder Blocks
There are several different types of cinder blocks that you'll have to choose between before you set about building your water fountain. Build a water fountain with cinder blocks with help from a home design professional in this free video clip.
Transcript
Hello. Thomas Lowe here. And I'm a landscape designer in Atlanta, Georgia. Today, I will be giving you some tips on making a fountain out concrete blocks. What I have here are several different types of concrete blocks. This is cat blocks, and whether you're making a small fountain as I'm going to show you how to do here today, or a larger fountain, I would really recommend using these cat blocks. You can use the larger cinder blocks. Cat blocks don't take up as much room but you can use either one. So what I did was I went to one of the home centers and purchased several cinder blocks. I actually purchased about 6 of those and I also purchased 2 cat blocks. And the fountain will actually go here. This is a multifunctional as a bench and a fountain in one and I'll show you how to put this together. I highly recommend construction adhesive. This is fairly inexpensive, you can get this at the hardware stores, home improvement centers. This is super to hold the cinder blocks to these concrete blocks. Now before you attempt this design, this is one of my original designs I did a couple of years ago, you really need a flat surface to put these on. You'll need a balcony patio. These are great for urban designs, patio designs, anywhere on a flat surface. So first of all choose a flat surface. Pick out how many blocks you want. In this case there's 6 cinder blocks and 2 cat blocks. Now, also something that will help make sure that it's almost perfectly level, are the little runners that you put on the bottoms of the chairs and furniture in your house. You can get those at the home improvement centers. So I've cut these actually in some triangle pieces but you actually can buy some you don't even have to cut. And stick these to the bottoms of the cinder block. And also it sort of creates a little bit of shadow at the bottom and that helps in the aesthetics. So, go ahead and fasten first. Before you do anything fasten all of these runners to the bottom of your blocks, with the exception of the cat blocks. The cat blocks seem to be just a little bit longer than these cinder blocks. Now, what I did, this was already glued. This has been on here for a while. First of all you take this block and then you turn it on the bottom and then you take your construction adhesive and don't put the construction adhesive towards the end. Actually put it on the inside right here and on the inside part. That way when you go to put these cinder blocks on end it doesn't ooze out here. It actually oozes more on the inside. And you want to leave this cinder block for at least a couple of days, you know 2 or 3 days to really cure and dry well. So once that's done this becomes one whole piece. So just in a quick review, put your runners on the bottom, glue with construction adhesive, this cat blocks to the cinder blocks and the next piece is if you notice, there is, there's these grooves in the bottom of your cinder block. Now, make sure that these grooves, you have the grooves because some cinder blocks don't always have these grooves so makes sure they have grooves in the bottom. And what happens then is you can get this metal piece that I purchased in a popular home center, that's pretty popular. You can get this in a hardware department. But this is a metal piece and it fits perfectly in the cut out of these cinder blocks. Now, the reason for this is, one is aesthetics, the second reason is that it also causes you to line up these blocks almost perfect just really in the right form. And now it's important too to know how you want these concrete blocks are apart. For aesthetics I kind of left a little bit of a gap kind of tapering the smaller gaps. So I went ahead and set up the blocks first and then went back and put this piece. Now this piece comes in I think anywhere from 4 to 6 feet. Some even longer than that. So you can cut this with a hack saw. Because this is actually pretty tough metal, so you can cut that with a hack saw to fit. So once this piece is on here and this locks together then what you do is you come back, take these other pieces. This piece just goes right up there, this design I happen to want to keep them side by side. Now, for your fountain, for your smaller fountains, what I did was I found a small plastic garbage can at a retail center. And you may can go online and Google small plastic garbage cans. And what you want to do is you want to make sure you get the right size. You want to measure the distance between your cinder blocks here to make sure you get the right size trash can. It can be a little bit smaller if you can't find the right size. And then you can take the top off. Actually I used my hand pruners to cut the top out here. And then this actually is going to be your shell so that your water is stored in here. Also you can go to a pond supply company or one of the retail stores and home improvement centers, garden shops and get a very small pump. And you want to get a tube that can go on the end. There's tubes that are sold that will stick down into here. That way you can get the water coming up here and you don't have to have one but in this case I put one on here. And then you have your plugin. So what you do is is just first, you take your pump and you put it in the bottom of the fountain. And then I took the plugin cord and I ran through so it fits right there. Now, so that you get this the right height, a comfortable height for you, I recommend taking a small bag of sand a bag of flour, put sand in a Zip-lock bag, a big Zip-lock bag or a small one, and fill the sand, the bag of sand accordingly so it adjusts and put this in the bottom of the area between the bottom of the small liner and the open space to adjust the height that you want. So then you go ahead and just pull any slack. There's a little bit of an opening here. Now, this plugin can run behind the bench. You may need to get an extension cord if you don't have a plugin close by. Then, in the same home improvement center I found some small pieces of sheet metal. You don't have to use these but I used these for decoration purposes as well as to keep some debris out of the pond, the little fountain. So this I used some tin snips or heavy duty scissors. You might can use garden hand pruners but I think tin snips works the best and you can just bend that at the right width you want to form whatever shape. And then just slides between the liner and the cinder block. You have a little bit of a snug fit. There is goes. And now you've got a little bit of a cover that will sit on there. And I cut it so that the tube will still stick up through the top and then you'll have the water just shoot through here. And if this is too long you can adjust it by cutting this tube or not even having a tube on here. And then you could also have a bench where you sit here, you could put flower pots on the side. Or you could sit several people. This sits about 2 people here or maybe 3 children. So I hope this has given you some ideas for a small concrete fountain with cinder blocks. There's also some larger ones you can build as well. But just use your cat block and your landscape adhesive. My name is Thomas Lowe and I'm a landscape designer in Atlanta, Georgia.
