Making a new project for a restaurant

Thursday, September 25, 2008

 

Los Rancheros is a really good Mexican restaurant in DeKalb, Illinois where we go on a nearly weekly basis.  After seeing my pond project online, the owner asked if I could make a faux rock water feature for the restaurant.  I spent a lot of time this summer designing, experimenting and building the project and installed it a week ago today. If you want to see the project, check out the album in my pictures section.  I chose to use a rigid preformed 50 gallon pond liner purchased from the local Lowe’s as the pond basin and built a wood frame around it. The project is composed of 28 individual pieces of lightweight concrete, using styrofoam beads as the aggregate. The pieces are finished with an acrylic latex modified mortar layer and colored with a combination of intergral concrete colorant, concrete acid stain and latex paint hand-applied "speckles" using a splatter technique.  The waterfall has two preformed spillway basins incorporated and surrounded by faux rock. Water is circulated with a 210 gallon per hour pump and there are six underwater lights installed withing the spillway basins and the pond proper. The owner plans to plant vines in the incorporated planter and to put tropical fish in the pond. Mesh bags with mechancal and biological media will be placed in the spillway basins when the fish are added.