My crazy water table project is finally done! It turned into a much bigger project than I thought but it was fun to work on together with my handy hubby. I wanted an outdoor water table for Francie and Maisie to play in but couldn't find any I liked online (Amazon let me down). A friend said they had cool fountains at a place in Napa that were just oval horse troughs which I thought was brilliant so I called Heff on the drive home from his first hunt and asked him if he could stop at a feed store and pick me up a giant water trough. He was a little confused but agreed to haul a four foot aluminum water trough from Eastern Nevada home to Menlo Park. What a nice husband :) We didn't get to start working on it until after the playhouse move so I had some time to figure out how to make it somewhat resemble what I envisioned in my head. Heff had some good ideas too and after a few trips to the irrigation and hardware stores this is what we finally came up with. It seems to work and has been a big hit in the backyard so far...
Here's a little "Horse Trough Water Table" tutorial... ;)
We made a false bottom "table" out of 4×4's and plywood to fit snuggly in the horse trough and leave about a 3-4 inch drop from the rim
then drilled a hole in the center for the 1 1/2 inch copper pipe
I bought a bunch of tiles at Home Depot in the kitchen/bath tiling section and then got some glass beads at Michael's Craft Supply and decorative (plaster/fake so they won't break) sand dollar shells in the clearance bin at Pottery Barn
We couldn't decide between copper and galvanize steel pipe but finally went with copper because it looks so much prettier and is safer for the water kids will inevitably drink (they guy at Home Depot tried to talk me into using PVC since it so much cheaper but I had to explain to him it would look really crappy on a water feature)
Heff cut smaller pieces off a 10 foot section of copper pipe for between the fittings
then my favorite part... soldering the copper with a blow torch! Heff started but let me do the second half- it was fun to play with matches and fire and solder ;)
this stuff is pretty cool! After you put some chemical stuff on the inside, heating up the pipe really hot makes it suck in the solder stuff. It turns to a silver gob first... I kinda thought the Terminator might jump out at me when it did that.
We made four different outlets at 90 degree angles apart, reaching about 3 feet up from the table. We plumbed clear irrigation tubing into each arm of the fountain so the water pressure would be a little more evenly distributed and make it all the way to the top. THIS might have been the hardest part (judging from the four letter words flying out of my husbands mouth :) We got three of four done with black drip-line tubing but it was not going to happen to get the fourth one in so we pulled it all out and started over with a smaller, clear irrigation tubing.
Then Heff cut a big opening in the trough so we could get to the underworkings and fix things if we ever needed to (since the top had to be caulked/water tight)
We cut a piece of "HardieBacker" to fit over the plywood, two semi-circles to fit snuggly. We also put a kitchen drain in that can be plugged up or not to fill the 3-4 inch pool with water or to just let it drain as it fills. The water drains on the side to a pipe that goes right out to the underground street drainage. We didn't do a pump or recycled water so it would always be clean water. Then we taped up the edges and seams and finally I got to start tiling! I didn't really know what I was doing but figured I couldn't mess this up too much for kids to play in.
A work in progress... Jannie suggested I "pique assiette"/break up the big blue tiles and I had to get a few more pieces (this was not a single digit run-to-home-depot project!
and the finisihed product! Can't say it was quick and easy but it was fun to do and keeps Francie entertained. Hopefully it sustains the test of little hands (and feet! Francie isn't supposed to walk on it like she did in the top photo since it's slightly dangerous but it will hold her :)
