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(More customer reviews)I'm a technologically challenged, not very rich 72-year-old-grandmother who lives in the country and is extremely concerned about the environment.
While I've always wanted a birdbath fountain, I didn't want to get involved with expensive, complicated plumbing or have to depend on electrical house power to move the water. Instead, I wanted my birdbath fountain to be solar-powered with a battery backup, easy to install, low maintenance and, (yes, I'll admit it), cute.
The Solar-powered Birdbath Waterfall Rock fits my requirements exactly.
When it arrived, I unpacked my Birdbath Waterfall Rock and its accompanying parts with some trepidation. My more technologically gifted spouse instantly grabbed the instructions and took charge. Fortunately, the instructions were written by someone who understands regular English, which is a nice change, and they are concise and to the point.
The first thing we realized was that we needed a new birdbath to support our Waterfall Rock with a deep enough bowl to submerge the pump. However, we didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for it. Before we went any further, we drove around the area and looked at birdbaths and fountains ranging from the small and relatively cheap to the unbelievably elaborate, huge and expensive.
It soon became obvious that none of the local nurseries was offering a birdbath for sale with the bowl depth we needed that was anywhere close to our modest price range. So it was on to Plan B.
I'd almost given up when I found a clear plastic liner for a large flower pot base for $1.00 in Walmart's garden department. It not only looks nice, it's exactly the right depth to submerge the pump. Being the liner is quite flimsy, I bought four. In another part of the store, I came across a galvanized aluminum dog's water dish that was the right size to support the liner. Finally, we located a two piece cement birdbath on display in WalMart's parking lot for less than $25.00 and were on our way.
As recommended in the instructions, we set the solar panel outside for at least two days to charge its battery. Actually, it was more than two days but we wanted to be sure. However, when my husband suggested putting the solar panel on the car's roof, I vetoed the idea on the grounds that one of us, (probably me), would drive off and forget it was there.
In the meantime, we attached the pump to the Waterfall Rock's insides and waited. Finally, when the solar panel was charged to our satisfaction, we found a spot to set it on top of one of the bird feeder poles, filled our homemade insert with water and plugged in the Waterfall Rock. As noted in the product description and instructions, the wire from the Waterfall Rock was plenty long enough to reach the top of the feeder pole.
Then we switched on the solar panel and, Voila! The water came burbling out of the top of the Birdbath Waterfall Rock and ran gently down the sides exactly as represented. At that point I thought, "It can't be this simple!" but it was.
As a final touch, I had set a five gallon plastic bucket under our window air conditioner a couple of days before. The humidity has been so high the bucket's been filling up every eight hours. This means, in addition to the fountain's solar power, the water, which I'm storing in recycled gallon milk jugs, is free.
The final test was, would the birds like it?
The answer is yes. One of them, in fact, had a perfectly lovely time splashing around in the surrounding liner and I'm sure there'll be more.
Since we have a two acre yard with lots of trees and a correspondingly large bird population including finches, buntings, cardinals, orioles, towhees, doves, robins, mockingbirds, thrashers, bluebirds, cowbirds, starlings, sparrows and a couple of extremely noisy wrens, one such fountain is obviously not going to be enough.
I like this little fountain so well, in fact, I'll probably get another before too long.
Not only is the Solar Birdbath Waterfall Rock totally charming, we were able to put it together with little or no trouble. It actually worked on the first try and I'm awarding it five stars with no ifs, ands or buts.
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Solar Powered Birdbath Waterfall Rock
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