fountain with leaking plug...

[Chris Fox]

I have a patio fountain that came with a large rubber stopper(2.5 dia x 1.25" thick) and a short roll of green colored putty tape. The stopper has a slit and a hole in the cetner for the pump cord.
I am having a hard time sealing this stopper up in the basin of the fountain.
I have rolled the putty around the stopper and the slit and the cord but still leaks.
I have tried to use silicon which has worked the best but still leaks. After several attmepts with the putty and silicon no luck. I want to be abel to remove it when I need to drain it so it cant be a permanent fix.
Seems like an easy thing to do but...??
- should I use a nother type of putty. Plumbers putty?
- butyl rubber for sealing?
- technique for using the putty

thanks for your help...
Chris

 

[kgres]

To fix leaking fountain plug

I see your question is a year old, so you probably solved the problem by now. I had the same problem. I bought a container of plumber's putty, and found that it's much easier to use than the strip of putty that came with the fountain pump. To make a long story short, I used about half of the canister of putty....just kept stuffing it all around the cord and and packing the hole. The trick is to use generous amounts of putty. Stuffing it with enough putty finally stopped the leak. For next year, I've bought a big rubber plug. I drilled a hole thrrough the middle of it, and then used a little saw to cut a slit from the side of the plug all the way to the center hole. I'm going to pull the slit open and push the electic cord into the plugs hole...then i'll line the hole where the cord goes through with putty...and jam the plug into it...then push some more putty where the cord goes through the plug. If that doesn't work...I'll go back to my current method, which works fine even though it uses a lot of putty.