Why I Oughta...

A week or so ago, I debuted the initial build of my (DIY) Alpine trough wasserspiel (water feature) that I created out of a Styrofoam cooler and Vinyl Concrete Patch.  I built up a few layers of the concrete patch and tried to age it/paint it to make it appear more stone-like in appearance.  On top of that, I then applied a heavy-hand of spray waterproofing.  I chose Gorilla Brand Waterproof spray.  And...it turns out....spray waterproofing (with some sort of 'solvent' in the mix that allows it to be propelled as a spray, I think??) EATS AWAY at foam.  In this case, a Styrofoam cooler.   I sprayed the waterproofing on all sides - inside and out.  And, then, I tucked it away in the garage to await the '24 hour curing period'.  My plan was to then water-test it.   When I grabbed it out of the garage, I noticed something.  One of the inside corners looked different.  It was soft and 'eaten away'. Ugh.  I guess I didn't ...

Just a few days ago, I posted some inspiration and details of a DIY Alpine trough project that I found on Instagram where someone used a *real* stone trough as a water feature ( wasserspiel ).  I talked about buying a styrofoam cooler to use as the chassis and building out the 'stone look' with concrete.   As luck would have it, I came across a free (to me) styrofoam cooler this past week.  It is small.  At least....smaller than I want for a wasserspiel or...ahem.... Alpine stone trough.   But, for a prototype?  I think it will work perfectly.   The outside dimensions of the prototype are 15" long x 11" wide x 9" deep.   It has 1" thick walls.   Based on what I picked up from watching various YouTube shorts, Instagram reels and reddit posts, there are a number of ways to go about DIY'ing your own stone trough.  You can apply burlap and concrete.  You can apply something like an acrylic fortifier to try to g...

I saw this DIY fountain project featuring an Alpine trough and pondless setup on Instagram recently and it stuck with me so much that I've gone back to it a few times.  It is a small concrete (or stone or faux, I have no idea) trough, a simple copper faucet and an underground storage chamber that creates a pondless fountain situation.  Very European garden-feeling.  (To me, at least.)  Here it is embedded below:  View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sebastian Streich (@my.garden.life.and.home) It is small but pretty striking.  I've talked about upgrading our water-feature situation over the years and even included an upgrade on my 2026 to-do list (#23) .   I've read and watched a ton of stories/videos about hypertufa and have recently poked around on DIY'ing an Alpine trough.  It seems that one of the ways forward is using a foam chassis that you wrap in concrete to create a lightweight tub.  That seems......