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Hey. I'm Eric Triplett, The Pond Digger.
Today, I have a fun project I wanna share with you.
We're gonna install a little water fountain birdbath.
And nothing brings your landscape to life, like a little bit of water.
It attracts the birds.
It gives a gentle sound.
It's a really neat feature.
I wanna show you this guy.
I had this hand crafted, and we have this perfectly flat top and this little tiny pool.
We're gonna send just the right amount of water to come up, and
give a little movement above the pool.
Send water around the whole top, nice and mellow so the birds wanna land on here.
I got everything I need, right here in this little bucket.
I have our basin is actually where.
The water will be stored, and will send water up through here.
I grabbed some clear, vinyl tubing.
And the necessary fittings to make everything work.
I have a little, general purpose pump.
It's about 350 gallons per hour.
Remember, I just need a little, small flow to give a gentle sound, and a spot for
the birds to bathe.
I even grabbed ourself a little light kit with a transformer.
So we can light this thing up at night, and extend the enjoyment into the evening.
So, the first thing I wanna do is talk to you about layout.
As I mentioned we're in the front yard of a home in Redlands,
we're right by the driveway.
I positioned this column, so as you come into the driveway.
It's one of the first things that you're gonna see.
It's gonna be wet.
If it's at nighttime, the light's gonna make it dance a little bit.
I've also positioned this real close to a window.
Now, I could have pulled this over to my right, but
the viewing from inside the house would have changed.
So, since this is a, a birdbath water fountain,
we wanna be able to observe the birds from the inside of the house.
And take a peak at them without scaring them.
Now that we have the best location for this, I'm gonna pull the fountain back out,
and I'm gonna bring in that fountain basin, and then we can start to excavate our hole.
Okay, I have the basin put in the same location that I was.
I wanna give you a tip on the excavation.
It's not gonna take long, it's not a very big hole that we have to dig.
But we don't wanna do, is have this set too low,
because we don't want stuff from the yard pouring in to it, like when you irrigate,
and or it rains really hard, and water is coming off the roof.
We don't want dirt to come washing in to this.
So, what we're gonna do is, we are gonna dig this down.
And we're gonna have this lip sticking up.
So the, the excavated area's gonna be about an inch and a half below the top of this.
I'm gonna reserve some of the dirt, right around the area that I'm digging in.
And then I can taper the soil away from it.
So, all I'm gonna do is make a little spin, like this.
And mark my spot, and now I can take this out and start digging the hole.
Take a close look at that shovel.
That thing's seen some, some holes.
Hope it makes it through this dig.
Okay, as you can see, the dirt is below the upper lid, and then,
we'll put a level on here to see how we're looking.
That's looking good, and
now I'll just back fold the edges, and compact it tight.
What I'm doing is just gently compacting around these edges, patting soil in there.
Cuz it's kind of a cone shape, as you can see.
Okay! The hard part's done.
We got the hole dug, we got our basin installed.
Wanna show you how this top works.
I have this port right here is where our, our pump can go in and out.
And we have a little cord notch right here.
Now this right in the center is where we'll.
The hose will connect from the bottom of the fountain.
It'll come down through here, and underneath is where our pump will be.
And now, this sits on here like so.
We'll get the column set on there.
Pump goes through here, cord comes out.
Runs to the electricity.
This thing is kinda stuck on there, I'm not too worried about it because,
I'm gonna cover this with cobble, and then the water will slowly make it come apart.
So now that we have this all fit into place, I'll position the column in there,
make sure I like it, before I start to do the plumbing.
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