If i remember correctly you were not the handiest of guys . though were not affraid to give it a try. well you hit a grand slam Look fantastic nicely done. We have people all the time looking to do the looking glass windows and you have certainly taken that to the extreme. would you share the specs on your build the size of the pond depth and thickness of the glass and it's size what you did to make the seal and the supports. And well done you did your hotel right im sure you have folks sitting there all the time watching the fish .
Hi and many thanks for the comment. I am actually very pleased with the finished result although as you said I am not the handiest of chaps. YouTube was a great help as were you guys however it still took me almost a year to do.
The pond is 14 feet long, 8 feet wide and 4 feet deep.
The wall above ground is about 1.5feet tall. The majority of the water is below ground.
The surrounding brick work is supported by 10mm re bar every 18 inches or so drilled about 14 inches down into the below ground concrete.
Then plastered inside and out.
Next job was to cut out the recesses for the windows, 2 inches wide and 1.5 inches deep with an angle grinder.
The fibreglassing was a real pain and I would not recommend anyone who has not done this before to even contemplate doing your self. It is NOT as easy as it looks on YouTube.
The resin gets on your gloves and the glass mat gets stuck to everything, all over the gloves and is not so straight forward to apply plus it is a race against time before the resin goes off. First was to resin the walls and floor, then apply the glass matt. Then more resin to wet it in. The next day lightly sand and apply more resin. Then a layer of fine tissue glass. Adding more resin to wet it in. Then came the night mare. The flow coat! I live in the highlands of Malaysia about 1300 meters ASL, we are in the clouds a lot of the time so it is around 18 degrees C during the day and can be very damp and misty. This is quite cool for a tropical country. Well the flow coat would not go off it was sticky to tacky even after 3-4 days. I had to acetone wash it all off, re sand and reapply, this is not fun. This was done 6 times in total. The supplier was useless because they had not supplied to a cold place before and could not give me a solution to get it to go off, it was costly and very time, consuming. In the end for the final attempt I contacted a guy in the UK who suggested that I mixed the flow coat 70/30 with some normal resin and added 3% extra accelerator, brilliant, someone who seemed to know something. We had to work fast, but between myself and my son we got it on in record time. The great news was it all went off rock solid in 20 mins, what a relief.
The outside was then tiled, for you guys maybe normal, for me was my first time. I was stressed.
The windows are tempered glass 20 mm thick, I know some would say not enough thick but I partially followed the advice of a local aquarium guy who said actually 12mm was enough but we went extra a bit.
The windows are fixed into the recesses with Sikaflex 291i marine grade PU sealant. I went with PU because I read that it was stronger and longer lasting than silicone. I used about 15 tubes on each window, this was to ensure they were solid, didn't leak and to fill all the bumps because I didn't get the recesses as flat as they should have been. The windows were held in place with 2 of those glass panel sucker carriers, a plank and ratchet straps for 24 hours.
As the window is under 1.5 feet high and the water itself is less than that there is little pressure against it and the bulk of the total water pressure is under the windows, underground against the concrete walls. There is no bow in the glass and feels very rigid with no movement, flex or give at all. Then it was a matter of getting water in and leaving it to settle and harden off.
If you have read this far I hope this helps, if you need to know anything else please ask I am no expert but am willing to share what went right and what went wrong. I know is difficult finding information because when I built this I searched everywhere for advice. So I am also willing to share. Let me repeat though I am no expert.
