Fontaine Eww

One of the first things we wanted to demo in the house was this fountain.  Our yard has a huge 30 x 30 workshop in the backyard which eats up all of the big yard space.  Because of the shed, the yard is pretty small and mostly just runs along our property line.  When we first saw the fountain it was okay - it was one of the seller's favorite features - but to us it is a mosquito haven, we didn't want the dog playing in it and we like having grass.  I would say the fountain is probably 6 feet long by 4 or 5 feet wide and 2.5 ft deep.

On move-in day the fountain was on and running....and not all the way full.  The next day the fountain was maybe 1/3 of the way full....where was the water going?  Like everything else in our house it probably wasn't well taken care of so I shut it off to see what happened.  By day three it was just a tiny bit of water so we knew it needed to come out.  The mosquitos are really bad at the house so one day I got so fed up I poured bleach into the water until I could buy some water boots to get in there and scoop it all out.  We weren't sure if it was a plastic mould or if it was just some kind of weed/water barrier.  While we were tackling the side yard we decided to start this project.

After mowing down the monkey grasses (gotta check for spiders!) and moving all the rocks, we realized it was just a hole they had double lined.  We broke it up into sections and started tearing the liner with box cutters to try to avoid the stagnant water.  Let me tell you, it smelled so bad when we started pulling the liners out!!!  All this black sludge came pouring out of the liner and settled into the hole - luckily it dried out quickly and it hasn't really smelled since then.

So this is the yard's current state.  I am hoping this weekend we can finish the demo and figuring out how to back-fill this hole.  Ultimately we would like to remove all of the river rocks on the right side of the fountain and make that grass too.  I need to craiglist these nicer rocks - they would be great for someone's yard as a decorative edge on a flower bed.  Unfortunately there are close to 2 truck beds worth of rocks so I hope someone wants them!