Miscellaneous: Fountain restored

The fountain in our garden was designed by me and made from a basalt column into which I had a bowl carved and a bore hole drilled to allow a hose to pass through to a pump that sits in a depressed reservoir below the pump. We set it up in 2001 or so with the help of my wife's father, who has years of experience handling stone in Japan. The drilled column was delivered to our driveway. We had to transport it about 70 yards to the back of the house, a move we accomplished with a skid and rollers, likening ourselves to ancient pyramid builders. Using levers, we then raised it into its upright position and secured it to its base. It functioned without problems until last autumn when the pump finally failed. I have no complaints, the pump lasted a good 22 years, but I missed the fountain immediately. 

The problem of reviving it has been on my mind many months. The thought of exposing the reservoir (hidden by a wire mesh covered with rocks), cleaning out the reservoir (which had an eight-inch layer of muck in the bottom from 20+ years of decaying plant debris falling into it), replacing the pump (which required disconnecting the old pump and hard-wiring in its replacement), and then putting the whole thing back together again was enough to keep me procrastinating.

I'm happy to say that, with a great deal of help from my friend David (always willing to lend a hand), it's up and running again. Sitting on the back deck is much more pleasant with the burbling fountain there. Also, in very hot weather the bees from our beehive like to collect water from the side of the stone pillar to cool the hive with. As a heat wave is supposed to descend on us from tomorrow for a week or ten days, the repair was completed just in time.