By Mike Bradley inventor
We moved out of the city for some peace and quiet, down in the woods on a dirt road. We thought it would be interesting to put up a bird feeder so we could feed the birds and enjoy watching birds. The birds and squirrels kept the bird feeder empty, a refill lasted a few hours and made a mess. Finally got the bird feeder fixed to keep the squirrels out, but still the bird feeder was too much to keep cleaned and filled. So we decided to put out a birdbath to see if it would attract enough activity for our bird watching pleasure. The birdbath worked fine, got lots of bird business, so much that it was low on water and dirty most of the time even with a daily rinse and refill.
Next we put in a gear driven lawn sprinkler head on the end of a flexible vinyl tube to spray and rinse the birdbath out, then refill it.
This required burying a ½-inch plastic pipe from the pump house to the birdbath with a lawn sprinkler timer/controller and 2 valves. The first zone is a regular valve set wide open to spray wash the bowl, on zone 2 the valve is adjusted for low flow to refill the bowl. The new version takes about 20 minutes to install, and it is easy.
We ran it twice a day wide open to clean for about 3 min. then low pressure to refill for about 1 min. This arrangement worked ok but did not directly spray wash the entire wetted surface of the birdbath, so thick green and black stuff started to grow in the area that was missed by direct spray cleaning. The birdbath still required a good manual brushing every few days to stay clean and clear.
Over the years we have made many changes, finally settling on the current design, so simple when you see it, so hard to discover by trial and error. As with any good design the simplest means of doing the job well is the best design. We decided to get a patent and maybe sell a few birdbaths. The patent search for prior art in the field turned up lots of patented self cleaning birdbaths. They were all very poor at the cleaning part of the job, they only change the water, no cleaning action. The previously patented self cleaning birdbaths are way too expensive to manufacture and install, which is why no body has ever heard of one. Our self cleaning birdbath can be made using the same materials and techniques used by any birdbath manufacturer, easy to make, no machined or precision parts. Our birdbath does a far better job of cleaning itself than the next best design. The patent has been granted, 7,011,041.
After one version or another being in operation long enough for every bird and squirrel to know about the self cleaning birdbath they see our birdbath as a natural water source that is ALWAYS there and clean. As time goes by birds and squirrels seem to nest nearby in abundance. Everybody comes, on dry days birds congregate near by and wait in line for a turn in the birdbath, biggest goes first. Some of the regular visitors who get impatient during the cleaning cycle go ahead and get in during the refill part of the cycle. We have even seen hawks and wood peckers come for water when times are dry.
The current version of the fully automatic self cleaning birdbath in the front yard is ceramic and mounted on a 4” plastic pipe pole set in concrete. It is run by the same standard water sprinkler timer and two valves through a buried ½” PVC irrigation pipe as the original shown above. The ceramic version looks cool, but will not be a production item, cost too much and takes too much labor to assemble.
You can install the fully automatic water hose timer powered concrete version in about 20-30 minutes if you can screw water hoses together and tighten a screw. It is featured on the home page (selfcleaningbirdbath.com) and is now for sale. The fully automatic self cleaning bird bath will provide you the best back yard birding experience possible for the time and money invested. We hope yawl enjoy watching the birds as much as we do. And you know they can’t get to any clean water fit to drink anywhere.
