How huge?
Ceramics could be a problem in winter but I suspect if you put it away for winter it should work OK.

I made a bowling ball/penny fountain and suspended it above/inside a very large bell shaped garden pot. It is tera cotta and not glazed. I read a lot of techniques here and ended up not glazing or painting the inside. It ran all summer and did not sweat too bad. I had it outside on my deck. We brought it in for the winter.

arcy, I would love to see a photo of that!

Pat

I bought a large Vietnamese ceramic pot at COSTCO last summer, big enough to hold a three-year-old, that already had two holes in the bottom. It was glazed on the outside only. Following directions in a BHG article, I
- painted the inside of the pot with several layers of deck sealer, which I let dry for about a week,
- pushed the plug of a pump through one hole and caulked around the wire with exterior-grade silicon caulk (I left about a foot of the cord free inside the pot),
- caulked a right-angled hose connector into the other hole (thus preventing the hose from kinking on its way out of the pot and also allowing for easier disassembly for winter)
- ran one short hose inside the pot from the pump to the connector, and another much longer hose outside the pot up a fence, where I connected it to
- another right-angle connector I caulked into the back of a Toscano Bacchus-face sculpture, which already has a three-inch length of hose sticking out of the mouth. The mask is hung about five feet up on the fence, so the stream from its mouth arcs back into the pot.

Result: a homemade spouting Bacchus fountain for about $130, pump and hoses included. I have water plants that come inside for the winter, and I plan to buy new feeder goldfish to stock the pot as soon as the weather is reliably warmer. The deck sealer didn't seem to hurt last year's fish.

Does this help?

LynnT

Here is a pic of my latest pond :) The pot is ceramic. It took me about 2 hours with a grinding attachment to my drill to get the drainage hole big enough for the tubing. I didn't seal since it is ceramic.
{{gwi:860}}

Very nice, Garden trolip!

~Sandy~