New Project

So...

I started a new project (and actually finished within 24 hours).

I decided I needed a bird fountain. Why? Because I'm tired of washing bird dishes every two or three days. I'm sure their tired of having to wait two to three days for clean water too. Now you may be asking yourself, "What is a bird fountain?"


Well take a gander at this:

My bird fountain consist of a number of critical components designed to the same specifications the space shuttle uses (at least the same specs they use for the bird fountain currently in use on the space shuttle). Basically, I pump clean, fresh water into a basin and remove dirty water at the same rate. The basin for this particular project is a red plastic painter's tray. It has a slant for about 2/3 its lenght and a flat area on the left for a deeper pool. The dual purpose edge is used as a rail for bird sitting. In the middle of the bottom is a well sealed (hopefully) threaded elbow. Into this elbow, I losely thread a male connector to act as a removable stand pipe to lift the water level above the drain level. On the right, I have a pipe with two outlets to deliver the clean water onto the ramp for scaredy birds that don't want to hop into the deep water.

Underneath the cage is a 10 gallon aquarium to hold the water. (if you want to try this, make sure you don't use more water in your system than this tank can hold, you never know when a pump will die or be unplugged by mischievous cats). The down spout is 3/4 inch PVC with a fancy, shmancy prefilter (one of Jay's old tube socks, clean of course). The sock catches all the wood shavings and seed hulls and chunks of poo. Once through the sock, the water is filtered by two fish tank style filters. Eventually both of these filters will maintain active bacteria colonies that breakdown the waste products present in the water. The sump pump on the bottom right (actually a pond fountain pump) lifts the now filtered water up to the delivery tubes above via a 3/4 inch OD clear tube. The wrapping paper is to keep certain felines from trying to drink the bird water. Oh, and the shiny stuff underneath the power filter is a piece of an aluminum take-home dish that I have fashioned into a crude slide to return the water from the outlet of the pump into the basin. You see, fish filters are meant to be used with full tanks. This one is about 2/3 full so the water leaving the outlet would fall and make noise like a small waterfall. My slide eliminates that noise as the water is gently replaced in the tank.

These two pictures are general shots showing how it all hooks together. All in all, I think it's pretty cool. And I've learned that the new fun way to drink water, if you're a bird that is, is to take a sip from the water as it leaves the tube, before it lands in the basin. It is literally used as a water fountain. Not just ever replenishing basin like I planned.