KozyFill
I sent one of these to a friend who lives in Tasmania. She has a wonderful assortment of southern hemispherical birds that she likes to feed and provide water for, but she travels on a regular basis, and the birds empty the bath in a day. She tried various home-brew ideas for automatically filling the bird bath, but none really did the trick for her. Also, this one’s the most aesthetically pleasing I could find, as the reservoir sits separate from the bird bath.
I sent her the KozyFill, she set it all up, fine-tuned the height of the various tubes, and voila! She’s got a yard full of happy Eastern rosellas, wattle birds, the occasional cockatoo, and other sundry birds of the Antipodes. Watching the birds beats TV any morning: you've got drama, conflict and humor in dazzling color right outside the bedroom window.
[Plans for a homemade automatic bird bath purger-filler by James M. Clark here. –es]
Available from Amazon
Manufactured by Allied Precision
Favorite (15)
Jim
What does a hemispherical bird look like?
William
Jim, I'm glad I'm not the only one who imagined fluffy puffballs with beaks and claws.
johan
There's been a lot of talk about self-irrigating containers (earthbox and the like).
The problem is that you always need to keep topping them off.
If you install hoses into each one so that they are linked into equilibrium (ie, all have the same water level- I forget the term for this), you can use this gizmo to automatically keep them topped up.
(off topic question about the captcha: isn't the point of a captcha that the website already knows the right answer? If the internet archive knows the right answer, why does it need help proofreading?)
Kevin Kelly
@Johan: Good question! The answer is: two words!
From here: http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html
But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here's how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.
Rick Turner
"hemispherical" was a play on words. The internet doesn't do puns very well...
elon
@ Johan: A friend mentioned the same idea regarding self-watering containers after seeing the KozyFill review yesterday. If you or anybody else makes any progress on that front, I'd love to hear about it. -es
johan
@KK. A-ha!
Ok, that makes sense. thanks for the explanation.
As for the irrigation; I'm planning to build a couple of planters like that next season; it's getting too late to start new plantings. But I'll let you know how it goes.
The amazon page doesn't say how much pressure you need to open the valve. I was hoping to feed the valve from a rain-barrel, using only gravity. You get less that 0.5 psi per foot elevation, so I need either a raised rain-barrel or a valve that can open for 1-2 psi; much below what electric valves state that they require to open. I'm hoping that a float valve requires much less.
Sandra
Why has this story shown up at least 4 times as new in my feed reader? I am displeased. :(
fluffy
It has shown up in my feed reader quite a few times as well. It's getting a bit ridiculous.
Kevin Kelly
Attention to those who see duplicate items in your RSS feed. We switched servers earlier in the week to a new host in a new city. There are a few glitches leftover in the switch. The dupes are one of them. We are fixing it now. There may be other bugs we have not spotted. Let me know if you.
I apologize for the nuisance. I find them bothersome too.