I am happy with the way the landscaping came out - the techniques worked out much better than I expected.
The base is 3 pieces of 1-1/2" Styrofoam SM joined with half-lap, non-glued joints (to fit through the doors!) . Other pieces of SM, as many as 4 layers were glued one one top of the other to provide the elevation for the contours.
The Styrofoam was carved with a soldering gun and a 10" piece of 14 Ga. wire that could be bent to various shapes to make different contours. Hot wire cutting is a bit stinky but leaves a nice surface and smooth transitions. After shaping, the exposed surface of the landscape was treated with parging, an epoxy- masonry mix that adheres to Styrofoam. The parging allows texturing the surface anywhere from smooth to “sandy” and provides a tough durable surface.
After parging, the “rock” parts were sprayed with black enamel. While the black was still curing, I poured some green and some white enamel on a disposable dinner plate and using a brush and a small pot of thinner, I free-handed the rest of the painting. By using various amount of green, white, and thinner (all on the brush at the same time) I was able to get varying shades and if I wanted to darken an area, working the surface harder and with more thinner would bring the underlying black through. (I never thought of myself as an “artist” but DAMN that worked out nice!) After the paint had baked for a couple of days, I added plastic plants to bring it to life.
In the back right, at the highest spot, there is a “spring” which trickles into the upper pool. The upper pool is about a foot in diameter, holds about 6 Litres of water, and overflows in a little cascade into the stream that runs across the enclosure to the left (the cool side). There is a smaller pool in the grass at the end of the stream (about 6" diameter and 4" deep) that overflows into the return line. Both pools are equipped with an external drain line (to allow cleaning) and all the plumbing is plastic tubing embedded into the bottom of the Styrofoam base. The tubes pass out of the enclosure through a brass plate with copper tubing feed-throughs (“escape proof”) to an external reservoir containing a small fountain pump.
Under the right side of the upper pool you can see the “cave entrance” that leads in to the warm side hide. There is a cool side hide in the back left corner behind the smaller pool. Both hides have removable tops.
I just KNOW my baby is going to LOVE her new home . It is going to be such a radical change from living in a Tupperware container
For those with high-speed, a larger picture:
Image of Vivarium (Large) - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
I decided to try concrete because it has a long setting time and that gives me time to sculpt it, add textures, and actually test it with water before it is hard. I plan to use a styrofoam form to take up a lot of the bulk and a wire mesh grid to get the basic shape and mold the pipes into the cement. If cement doesn't work out well, I can always do another one in fiberglass.
It is now the centrepiece of my livingroom 
Linear Mode
