The Fountain of Joy

First, let me open with the view out my bedroom window this morning. You've probably heard how Denver had a big snow storm this weekend. Well, we didn't. However, the mountains just west of town did. You can see the nice fresh coat of white on them.

Also, you can see how green my next-door neighbor's lawn is compared to mine. He turned on his sprinklers a couple weeks ago, whereas I haven't yet. I did drag the de-thatcher around the yard yesterday in the rain, so my lawn kinda looks "combed."


My project for today was to get the little fountain pool that spills down into the corner of the back pond running. It's located right directly behind the pergola in the above picture, so's ya cain't see it atall.

It has never run since we moved here. To me, this seemed to obviously be because it didn't have a pump, and it's pretty damn hard to coax water out of a pond and up about four feet through six feet of 3/4" tubing to spring forth in a fountain without a pump. No, pump clearly was called for.

So I headed off to my local pond store (which, now, is the 3rd closest pond store - used to be the closest, but they moved past #2, and then someone opened up a new one even closer than that) where the guy is always very helpful, and he fixed my up with a pump and all the tubing an valves I'd need for the elaborate setup I was going for.

See, there was this little status of an alligator that was supposed to spout water into the little pool:


And there was also this little fishie that was supposed to spout water into the pool:


That requires a couple of extra lines with T's and apportioning valves. But in the end, it worked out:


When I first turned it on, I noticed it was spilling over the sides a whole lot and seemed to be washing a lot of dirt into the pond. Upon investigation, I discovered that the liner had not really been installed right for the channel, and that it stopped 8" short of the pond. The pond liner was all folded up under rocks down there, so I unfolded it and ran it up under the channel liner for about a foot so as to make a contiguous liner from pool to pond. This appears to have worked.

Oh, I also got a new toy. This is my new Blaster 1000 spa filter cleaner. It automatically turns the filter while it sprays it. Coolio.