Custom Ornate Sea Life Fountain

Thus, began the process of re-creating their fountain in Golden Cypress Granite, so they’d never again have to cover their fountain, but could enjoy its pleasing shape all year round, even while the fountain is covered with icicles or snow.

• This is possible because Granite is a non-porous stone, which not only LAUGHS at snow and ice, but is amazingly easy to clean / maintain if the water in your fountain has calcium or iron in it, which causes a milky white film or orangey / red iron stains on the stone surfaces.
  
  • Check out this blog post to learn more about which commonly available cleaning products can make your GRANITE fountain cleaning a breeze!
  • Vs. if you have a more porous stone fountains (like Marble, Limestone, Travertine, Cantera or concrete) – you’ll need to use much gentler cleaning products, be consistent with your fountain cleaning chores, and use a lot of elbow grease instead.
  • Here is a blog post that explain more about WHY granite is the best option for fountains in a freeze/thaw climate, and why granite fountains will last GENERATIONS in those regions of the country.
  • Vs. more porous stones will only last a fraction of that time in those same areas. (And in the instance of Cantera or concrete, that “fraction” of time can be as short as only 2 – 3 years, particularly if you don’t cover the fountain before freezing weather arrives!)

Honestly, we would NEVER recommend the very porous Mexican Stone called Cantera ever be used for a fountain, as even the chemicals typically used in fountains to keep algae out will eat that stone like alka seltzer in a glass!!

So, our first step in the Special Order Fountain (or statue) process (after the 50% down payment is complete) is to get a shop drawing set started, and approved by the client before they are sent to the carvers to start their part:

• Shop drawings essentially show “big picture” type details, sizes of stones needed for each part, general shape/size of each piece of the fountain, hole sizes needed for drainage or plumbing, etc.
• Plus if there are any specific carving details the customer wants, those are sent as supplemental photos in the shop drawing set.
  • Normally we just direct customers to find those carving details on google images, and find exactly what they want (from any photos around the world) even if they are a detail not actually carved in stone, but rather wood / resin / ceramic / etc.
  • And those photos are what we’ll send along with our shop drawings, to explain to the carvers how the fountain should look.

Then, the next step is to get a clay model done, so that the details of the most important pieces of the design are definitely as the customer wants them before the carvers start actually carving the huge granite boulder pieces.

• This tends to really only happen on statuary designs, as other designs like egg dart, acanthus leaf details, etc are very easy to explain with photos of those details.

The following are the clay models we did for this particular fountain, to ensure the customers liked the look before the artists went further