DIY Concrete Water Feature | Restoration Hardware | POPOSOAP Solar Pum

Amazing super Z and peaceful, yeah you guys like it? Great! You like it too, and we'll show you how to make your own. Yep, there's our other fountain we made a while back. So, if you guys want to know how we made this, we'll put a link in the description.

I saw this $1,200 Restoration Hardware concrete side table that I really liked. I figured I could make something similar with the supplies I already had, but I thought it'd be neat to turn it into a DIY water feature as well.

Supplies You Will Need

Here are the supplies you will need:

• One plant saucer.
• Wire mesh/pet screen (wire mesh P.W.).
• A half inch PVC pipe.
• A five-gallon bucket.
• Two things (yeah, those PVC pipes, I believe they're like 3 or 4 inches).
• Our solar pump (that's probably the most important thing that we'll need).
• Solar pump(s).
• Safety stuff/safety gear for sure.
• Hot glue.
• Hot glue gun.
• Blocks (not sure how many we'll need yet).
• Cut-off tool.
• Concrete.

Don't worry, we'll put the links! Oh, don't forget, we need concrete!

Cutting the PVC Pipe

So, the first step is to cut 4 inches off of this PVC pipe.

There we go, good job! Eye protection, your hair is tied back. Let me see... Yep, and then good, there you go. We're quarter, halfway through now. You have to hold the handle. There you go, there you go. Almost, it's falling, almost a little bit more. Yes, you did it!

Gluing the Pipe

All right, so we're going to put this like that. We're going to glue it onto there. Okay, good job, that's fixed! It's not perfect at all, doesn't have to be perfect at all.

Taping the Pipe

All right, so you're going to put the tape on here. Did you get the tape?

I'm just going to put this on here to hold it down, and then just take that tape and we can wrap it around to hold it in place.

Creating Openings

I used these PVC pipes to create an opening where I could pass the fountain hose through. You could always use a single PVC pipe in the center, but I used three so I didn't need to use as much concrete and it's definitely a lot lighter.

Want to grab that pipe, Sal? This one? Uh-huh, and we're going to place it right in the center, perfect! And that's going to be where the tube can come out of.

Applying Hot Glue

Have you used a hot glue gun before? No, I have not either. I know Mom has. Might have to go around the other side, around me. Hold, hold, turn it! Actually, stay there. Good, see how it's all sealed there? Is it hot? It is!

So, we'll let it dry. Get it to work, yeah, but let it dry a little bit and then do a little bit more. Okay, that way it's nice and stable because when we pour concrete on there it's going to be pretty rough.

Oiling the Saucer and Bucket

Just going to spread it around everywhere. Okay, got it! Oh, it smells so good! Well, it's oil. Oh yeah, rub it all around. I'm trying to get it slick, slick! What's slick? Slippery!

So next, we're going to do the bucket. Okay, right here.

Pouring the Concrete

Here, the plant saucer took a full 90 lb bag of quickrete, but the 5-gallon bucket only required about half or 3/4 of the bag.

Good, see how it's creating bubbles? Yeah, it's okay if it spills, so much!

The Wire Mesh

Now we have our TR. Just going to push the top down. So, I'm just going to kind of...

By the way, if you are a kid and you're doing this and your adult's not there, make sure to, wait for an adult and always ask an adult because some things could happen and you might have to go to the doctor's for, right? Well, no, maybe, yeah, probably yeah!

A Joke

That I have a joke. Why is six afraid of seven? Because 7, 8, 9! I don't get it. 7, 8, 9! 7, 8, 9, oh, because... Two I do not get it. 7, 8, 9, like seven, eight, nine. Yeah, now I get it! Wait, try not to whack it on!

The Next Afternoon

All right, so here's the next afternoon. Looks like everything's dried up pretty well.

Grinding the Concrete (Mistake)

And there's all on our scooter. So, I made a mistake here. I tried to get fancy and decided to grind the top layer hoping to expose some aggregate, but the concrete wasn't cured, so it didn't go as planned.

Removing the Forms

This is 4 days after the initial pour. You'll thank yourself for oiling the form because you'll see how easily the concrete comes out. I thought it was going to be a lot harder to get the concrete out of the 5-gallon bucket, but it's actually pretty simple if you just gently tap the bucket on the floor. The weight of the concrete and uh gently tapping the bucket on the floor, it really did the trick for me.

Adding Cement

All right, so I'm kind of messed up. I wanted to create a little bit of texture, so I hosed it down and sanded it, but I don't really like how this turned out. So no problem, what we're going to do is take some of the cement all and put it on top of here. Are you ready, Sloan? Yeah, okay! Hope this works!

Sealing the Concrete

Okay, now that the concrete is done, now it's time to seal it. We are going to use Quikrete concrete and masonry high gloss sealer. All right, so let's go ahead and pour some of that into that cup.

Uhoh, that's good! All right, and then you're just going to brush it on there, on here, yes, everywhere. This is going to look so cool. Did you use that on that um on our that fire table, on fireplace? I sure did. This is going to look so cool. It is! How are how are we going to like make water splash of it?

The Wire Mesh Base

You'll see. The wire mesh is 32 by 27 inches, yes, and we have two of them. The hole, the actual hole that we dug is 27 inches x 28 inches. All right, so next step is we're going to take this level and you guys are going to get in the dirt or close to it and we're going to actually move this around so it's nice and flat.

Right, yeah, level! Oh, got a little Booker Ash!

Adding Extra Protection

All right, so we have some extra I don't know what you'd call this, rubber hose, that we had from our pool pump. It's not being used, so I'm just going to actually use this to line the bottom again as well where the cinder block H and we're going to go around the wire mesh on the outside just to give it a little extra protection.

The Solar Panel and Pump

Let's go ahead and unbox the solar panel. Okay, this water fountain pump I, we wanted one that's more powerful. The other fountains that we made they were um 6 Watts, which was sufficient, but this one I think we needed a little bit more power. It's going to be a little bit taller. So we have these stands here which we might use to hang the solar panel and then the solar panel is already face facing down.

That's the actual pump which Gray's going to open. I like these pumps though because they disconnect up. All right, so we have some, these, you know what this is for? Spray? No, it's a filter! It's a foam filter. So if you get dirt, leaves, debris in there, it'll catch it, protect the pump. This pump is also nice because it has dry run protection. So if you run out of water, we are actually going to run a drip line to that as well. But if it does run dry, these pumps are not affected. They won't burn out and that's the other reason we wanted this one. Not only is it 12 Watts, super powerful, but see how long that cable is? The other one that we had was pretty short. We have that mountain over there uh which is still going strong, but I think Gray, I think you're really going to like this new one. It's going to be super, super, super amazing. Yeah, I bet I will!

Setting Up the Pump

All right, so this is just going to go in the bottom of that pool that we just made, and that tubing is going to attach to the top here um and then we just connect it to the panel and we'll watch it go. Oh, the other thing that's nice about this, you see that dial? You can turn it to adjust the pumping strength. So sometimes you need more more water. If it's too strong, you could turn it down. Is that nice? Yes! All right, nice! Okay, want to grab that pipe or the hose? Yep, and I want you to connect that to here. Just squeeze it on that. Yep, and then we were going to guide that past that through the base of that concrete Fountain we built. Sounds good. Oh, so the water's going to like, it's going to like go in there? Yes, it's going to come out of there, it's going to fall off the table, drip down. We're going to have a very peaceful yard and then and then just going to keep going, just keeps going like yeah, you don't use any plugs, no outlets and the water just recirculates. Pretty neat. Yeah, all right, pretty neat.

Zip Tying the Tube

I do recommend zip tying this tube because it's actually it's pretty loose and it falls off pretty easily. So just going to take one of these.

Cutting a Hole for the Tube

All right, all right. So we're going to go ahead and cut a small hole for the tube.

Securing the Mesh

So for all right, so one thing I did that I also recommend is you can see we added some zip ties just to kind of keep the mesh and this silicone in place. So now we're going to be ready to turn on the pump, but before I set this up together, we'll go ahead and see how much power's coming through there.

Testing the Pump

Woo! Who, that's good! Okay, I think I'm going to leave it at that power. All right, go ahead and flip it back over buddy! That was perfect Gray. Okay, I'm really excited to see how this turns out. How the water going? Uh, it's pretty good if you ask me. Mom, look at how the waterfall! Oh, I actually ended up turning the power down a few notches just because it was kind of shooting everywhere.

Adding the Lava Rock

Okay, now that's going we have to add the rock. All right, so today we're going to be using that black lava rock um which is fine. This is, it's not going to fall through here, this mesh, but if you want to use something like this which we might in the future, we're not sure some fee gravel, you do have we bought this fer pet screen and you can see it's pretty fine so the gravel won't fall through there, but it's enough for water to pass through, but we'll we'll try, we'll try the Lava Rock first and see how that goes, what it looks like.

Final Setup

So this is how the base should sit. Basically, it's like having the five-gallon bucket upside down. We really loved how it turned out. It's really amazing how peaceful and relaxing having a water feature could be. We hope we inspired you to get out there and make your own.