Water Wall

[Pedro]

Has anyone attempted to build a stone water wall. I have seen extremely large ones in office lobbies that use stone and mortar. The one I would like to build is approximatelt 8' (wide) x 4" (high). I have not been able to find a resource for this on the internet.

[peterm15]

http://www.ssnakess.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60385

im pretty sure the foam/cement wall would work... that way its relitavly light weight... what will you be putting in it

[JonD]

Water walls are really sweet. Why would you only have it 4 inches tall though? Not really any point in having water fall a few inches.

[Bartman]

I was speaking to a gentleman a while ago and he was telling me his technique, which im going to try out pretty soon when I have empty tanks available.

Anyway he was telling me what he does first is spread a very thin layer of black silicone on the wall he is going to be designing. This will enable the foam to stick as it doesn’t stick well to glass.

He then uses insulating foam that comes in a spray bottle and expands. I’m not sure exactly what it’s called but im sure someone knows what it is and could be more specific. When this is dry you then take either a knife or what I think is better, a mini hand torch, and burn out the shape of the foam into what its going to look like. So you can burn out ledges and bumps and stuff.

Then when that’s done you lay it on its back and apply a crap load of black silicone on top of the foam. He told me its best to do it in small sections and mold the silicone to the shape you want. Then when you're done but it’s still wet you can sprinkle ecoearth/bedabeast on the silicone to give it a more natural look. Then leave it to dry and lift the tank up probably the next day so the excess falls down and presto, you have a sweet display tank.

I hope I explained that well :) If you have questions, ill try to answer them more specifically. Good luck!

[Pedro]

Sorry, it will be 4'-0" high!

[peterm15]

that would be good for a display... but skip the eco earth and spread cement, a really thin layre...

the faom he is talkin about is called spray foam... thats it... but you really gotta make sure you cover the other sides of the tank with paper... the stuff stains EVERYTHING... and expands to like 20 times its size. so be careful...

for a wall that size it might be better just to use sheets of stryofoam and maybe glue 2 together then shape what you want.

[JonD]

4 feet sounds better!!!;)

[dudsky]

yea bartman's method works, but from my own experience i tryed burning out the spray foam whe ntis dry and no go, it just burns like plastic and i wudnt use it anyways,just cant find any advantages. take a thick sheet of styrofoam, that stuff u can easyly burn with a tocrch and shape nicely, and then instead of using a crap load of "6 dolalr per can" silicone and actualyl making molds out of it, u already have all ur molds done from styrofoam, so u put on a thin layer just for the color and sticky base for sprinkling the ecoearth. AND u dun gotta cover the whole back wall with a thn layer of silicone to spray that crap on it, when u can put a couple of blobs of it here and there on a ready sheet of light styrofoam and glue it. ;) all this comes from my own experience and i chose whats better whats worse. i have put tile glue past on styrofoam molds before, it worked but smelled ofr like 2 months, and its not waterproof. i dont know about cement, can u tell me more about cement technique peterm?
thanks

[peterm15]

it was in my leo book which i cant seem to find... it was for making rocks that wont bust the botton out of your tank.... you basicly just shape a peice of foam... (any method of shaping but id perfer a file and knife) and just mix up a little bit of cement with cement die in i(optional) and put it on... let it cure and there you go..... a rock thats half the weight... no more broken tanks...

on another forum that im on ppl use this kind of method to make gas tanks ( for mini bikes) they just use fiberglass instead of cement... if you use the right stuff fiberglass is even gas proof.... so thats another method... a tad bit more expensive though