Making a Volcano... suggestions?

Ok, the backyard is finally getting redone.. .and one of my tasks is to buil Mt. Ubangee, the fire flanked smoke spitting volcano in the corner.

I'm thinking of a wood and/or metal frame, covered in chickenwire (for shape), with a layer of burlap, covered with expanding foam and capped with a quickcrete or SprayTop coat of very light concrete.

any thoughts? I havent done this before, and figured i'd ask before I got too far down the path to find out it doesnt work all that well, or there is an easier way.

the Volcano will need to be hollow to allow room for the smoke machine, water and gas lines.

I would bulid it like the Kahiki built thier Moais out front
of The Kahiki.
They used rebar and metal mesh (like you would use to do stucco
on a house)
Bend rebar to shape. Then wire mesh to rebar.
Then put on concrete.
See Kahiki Big Moai rebirth in collecting tiki here on TC
for some photos.
Good Luck.

Hi Choptop, I'm in the planning stages of making the same thing, a waterfall/volcano, I was going to make a frame out of treated wood and build up my volcano shape with wire mesh and use either spray foam covered in fiberglass or concrete, still workin out the details, must have water, smoke and lights, and some Don Tiki playing in the background, Later EyeballJohn

The import car guys make speaker pods by making a basic buck out of MDF, stretching cloth over that, and then using fiberglass resin to make it solid and stiff. Adapting this, what about the steel or wood shell, chicken wire for shape, cloth over the top of this, and then fiberglass resin over this, painted with a stone effect paint for texture? Would be a lot lighter than concrete meaning the skeleton would not have to be as substantial.

oh yeh - make it BIG :D

In order to make a volcano-you'll need a huge titanium tipped drill or at least one of them Robust nuclear penetrating missles...You drill down into the earth until you hit lava...the lava spurting upward will create the cone of the volcano and you're done! :)

Diamond metal lathe (paper backed) is your friend! :wink:

It will shape wonderfully, and it will hold the crete!

http://www.centralexpandedmetal.com/expanded_material_patterns.asp

Been there, done that! Let me know if you need any help (questions that is)

Mahalo

McTiki

I am not a builder, and have no suggestions for how to construct a volcano. But I am currently amused with the thought of someone building a wood framed volcano, and then having it catch fire, and the local fire department being called in to save the burning volcano.

Vern

Make the fire fighters mai tais and call it good. I can't wait to see how this comes out. A Volcano could be cool. Keep us posted.

I used lava stone for my volcano fire pit,

I'm dying to try this as well. Let's see some pictures as it comes along.

I'll post some pics here soon. Will be trying out different small versions first. Will report back with some techniques and materials.

I am building one of these too. I plan to construct the base from concrete block and form the sides and vent with hand tied rebar and mesh. I think the concete will have to be poured in tiers ... I bet gunite would be awesome if you got some connections.

My Volcano will be a waterfall for the pond. Hopefully hiding the pump and filtration. Right now I have a good size hole.

Sounds like a good idea. I have heard that expanding foam is sensitive to UV, so the top coat of concrete would be important. The burlap is also a good idea, it solves the problem I had with the foam going though the chicken wire, and taking about 2x as much foam as you'd need otherwise. I really like the organic look that the expanding foam gives for a volcano.
Mine is just for indoors, built on a tomato cage with chicken wire. Red cellophane so the lights can be seen, with a fog machine on a 15 min timer. The lights were done with xmas lights, some on all the time, and some that flashed randomly, which gave it a great flickering effect, while still being on at some level all the time.
Here's the start with just a little bit of foam (Might have been the first can)

More foam

And a big jump to done - I might have put more black paint on after.

It did crack over the next few months, and now has some yellow foam color peeking out, I still like how it looks, and it's coming up on 2 years old. It's always inside though.

Go all you volcano builders! Can’t wait to see what you come up with. All this creativity!

Hee hee hee hee…little lost tiki :lol:.

Cute little volcano Mieko. I would love to see what it looks like with the fog and lights on.

Smiles, Mrs Hoptiki

I've been considering a backyard volcano as well. Some people have remarked how nice it would be to have a fire pit, and I envisioned a volcano in one corner with a lava flow of lava rocks down one side and into the main yard and down over a some gas flames that made it look like the bottom of the lava flow was still burning.

I have no idea how to construct a good, outdoor volcano structure, so I'll be watching this thread with much interest (and hoping to see many pictures).

found a resource for the volcano makins....

http://www.bragdonent.com/gfguide.htm

I'm getting down to it. Will take pics of the backyard and site on Thurs. Gas, power, water lines are run. Its time to start gathering supplies.

if you want flames out the top... here is any easy, but not cheap, way to do it...

http://www.cunninghamliving.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1843

some more flame sources...

http://www2.yardiac.com/list_categories.asp?tgs=2863694:44466218&cart_id=4522017:825818312168&id=695

and dont forget the red fire glass...

http://www2.yardiac.com/show_category.asp?tgs=2863694:44466218&cart_id=4522017:825818312168&category=1844

Wow, great resources Choptop! Thanks for sharing those!
The fire glass is kinda cheaper than I thought. I'd be pretty tempted to do a mix of colors, some red, orange, yellow and clear, since flame/fire isn't really solid red, but a lot more orange.

Maybe I will put a fire pit in my backyard after all. :)

I'd also like to thank Choptop for the fire glass link. We recently purchased a propane firepit from Lowes that we have on our deck. This gives me some ideas. THANKS!

Okay! Its been a few months but my wife and I have been working hard. We had to. A co-worker of mine has some Koi fish that he needed a home for and he heard I was building a pond. So we had to work pretty fast.

The hole with some of the bottom plumbing. Concrete was poured over this to base the side walls:

Other View:

So then we needed to make the Volcano/Waterfall. So we made a base and formed the shape with rebar.

My wife is the Queen of Concrete ... she somehow was able to coat the tied rebar and stucco mesh with aggregate concrete ... oh so artistic!!

*** Commercial Break ***

We needed our pond to not kill the fish with the lime in the concrete ... this took a bit of asking around .. this is the stuff. It is rated for potable water:

Its made by BASF ... they have specs on the website

After painting with concrete and patio paint ... the red is regular latex house paint:

I bought a mister unit .... it has 9 heads ... awesome!

Oh ... did I mention it hides the plumbing?

Skimmer

Oh and the Tiki we made to return water ... we affectionately call "Spitter"

Now on to the rest of the yard .. the Denizens have a home!

Sweet project! That's alot of work there. Very nice.

Mahalo

McTiki

The volcano is wickedly insane! I love it. This would work perfectly in my front yard and I may have to steal the idea.

On 2007-05-09 21:50, Choptop wrote:
if you want flames out the top... here is any easy, but not cheap, way to do it...

http://www.cunninghamliving.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1843

I'm thinking of a volcano (eventually) but it may end up inside so I will probably
use the fake "flaming pot" things from Spencer's, etc. and MIGHT add in a few of
the flickering flame lamps as well.

That is so cool! Reminds me of the volcano at Epcot in the Mexican pavilion restaurant!

The wire mesh is the key to this idea (obviously).

We have a ton of this type of material in stock if you are looking to buy some a great price go here:

http://www.bwire.com/

This is a great forum and I am proud to take part in these discussions.

On 2007-04-12 11:24, Choptop wrote:
Ok, the backyard is finally getting redone.. .and one of my tasks is to buil Mt. Ubangee, the fire flanked smoke spitting volcano in the corner.

I'm thinking of a wood and/or metal frame, covered in chickenwire (for shape), with a layer of burlap, covered with expanding foam and capped with a quickcrete or SprayTop coat of very light concrete.

any thoughts? I havent done this before, and figured i'd ask before I got too far down the path to find out it doesnt work all that well, or there is an easier way.

the Volcano will need to be hollow to allow room for the smoke machine, water and gas lines.

Hello
you can always use foam, just like the waterfall I've helped to build, they form just as you want and they are incredibly powerful especially if you pack it into the wire
you can see some pictures of it I've made here, concrete waterfall whit Coler is the name ..