Painting child's wading pool.

[David Alvin Besler]

I'm thinking of using a child's plastic wading pool as a cheap pond
for my turtle. The only problem is that I can't seem to find one
in an acceptable colour. Anyway, I was wondering:

1) Can these things be painted? What kind of paint would be good to
use?

2) I'm not sure what kind of plastic they're made of, but I do remember
people in this group mentioning kinds of plastic that won't stick to
anything. I suspect the wading pools are polyethylene, polypropylene,
or something like that. Anyone know what common plastics can and can't
be painted?

I'll probably mostly fill it with gravel, but I don't really want neon
coloured plastic showing through.
If anyone's wondering why I'd like to use a wading pool, I would need
to buy a rectangular piece of EPDM 7' x 10' to get the same size pond.
(It only comes in 10' widths at local stores). This would cost me
about $70 (Can) at Home Depot. A 5' diameter x 1' deep wading pool
is only $10 (Can). Plus, you can get wading pools with little slides
built in which would be just perfect for the turtle (although if it
costs me $5 or $10 extra, I probably wouldn't bother). BTW, I guess
it's obvious by now that I'm an incurable cheapskate do-it-yourself
type of guy, so there's probably no point in posting a bunch of those
"do it the right way even though it costs you tons of money you'll
be happier in the long run, blah blah, blah."

Thanks,

Dave.

[Jo Anne Slaven]

David Alvin Besler wrote:
>
> I'm thinking of using a child's plastic wading pool as a cheap pond
> for my turtle.

much snipped...

David:

For our first pond, we used vapour barrier - the stuff you buy at Beaver
Lumber when you need to insulate your basement. It comes in a roll 8'
wide by about 50?' long, and costs about $30. We used a double thickness
of the stuff, and underneath it we put a layer of black plastic garbage
bags, for "colour".

The reason we used this stuff was that we were too cheap to buy a real
pond liner at the time. It worked great, started to look half-decent
after about 3 weeks, and it lasted 2 years. Then we were hooked on ponds
and forked out for the REAL liner.

IMHO, this is a better cheap pond than a wading pool.

Jo Anne