Build Your Own Solar Powered Water Heater for Your Garden
The crows have begun. I noticed that they often played in the puddle that formed in the rock garden next door when it rained. I like crows; they rewarded my frequent attempts at conversation by keeping my roof free of moss and branches, and when they feel really sociable they bring me dead things.
So I bought a birdbath from the grocery store’s garden center and moved it here. She added a delightful color to my garden, but I didn’t often see birds enjoying her, which made me sad. But they seemed to enjoy the spray from the sprinklers, so I decided to put up a fountain and spend $11 on a cheap Amazon solar pump for the birdbath. Hours later, you’d think Taylor Swift had been seen. It was not only crows – all the local birds were dancing, having fun in the fountain.
You can buy water features at your local garden center or home improvement store, and they are widely available on Wayfair, Amazon, and the like. But they are almost always expensive and require electricity. I liked the idea that I could attach the water feature wherever I wanted without wires, but I just didn’t want to spend that much. So I did it Amanda.
How to make a simple solar fountain in the yard with your own hands
Indeed, any drinking bowl for birds, a large bowl or planter can become a fountain. This requires nothing more than a vessel holding at least a gallon of water and receiving some sun. There are inexpensive standing bathtubs on the internet, and I’m always surprised how many are being given away for free on platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist.
No matter how you purchase your pool, these simple and inexpensive floating pumps work great, all for less than $20. As long as there is sun and enough water in the pool, they will pump water in 10 or so different configurations that you can choose from. While I like a high jet, I have found that the tub will dry out too quickly, so I tend to keep it low. I fill it up every few days in the morning and put the pump inside every winter.
You also don’t need to use a tall birdbath. Any large tub will do, and the more and more water it holds, the better. You can also fill your bathtub with rocks of any kind, which means birds and bees will have something to land on and drink safely without drowning.
In most cases, you can expect your fountain to only run in sunlight, so it will stop at night. Some solar fountains have a higher battery capacity, so they can hold a charge and work for a while without sunlight. Some pumps have stylish lighting for night operation (and some have less stylish lighting ).
How to build a solar overflow fountain
By the end of the third year of the pandemic, I had twelve bird feeders, mason bees, and an adorable squirrel in my yard. I wanted some of the land creatures to be able to access the water on the hottest days, and I loved the look of the fountains I saw. However, I still didn’t want to pay for an expensive electric fountain, so I decided to look into solar panels.
To start, you’ll need another pump , this time with a tube and the ability to push water up that tube. I started with two low pots I got on sale, one about ⅔ smaller than the other. Pottery is good, but now they make similar pots out of plastic or resin , which look surprisingly upscale and can be painted. It’s always worth checking your local garden center’s email list for pottery sales and looking around for places to buy discount pottery.
Obviously you will need to plug all the drainage holes on the bottom pot and I used waterproof clear silicone and a few rocks for this. I used a river rock slightly larger than the hole and added a lot of silicone to the bottom to close it. Leave the hole in the top bowl open.
Take your small terracotta pot and break off a small piece of the rim with a hammer. Be careful: Terracotta is easy to crumble, but you just need the pot to have enough integrity to stand up. You can also use a plastic pot that you plant your seedlings in – just drill a hole in the bottom of it, big enough to fit the clear pump tube.
Place the pond pump in the center of the large pool and glue it down with some silicone. (They often come with suction cups, but they don’t hold them well in place.) Place a cord over the edge of the pot and connect a clear tube to the pump’s outlet. Pass it through the hole at the bottom of the inverted pot and place the pot on the pump.
Fill the bottom of the pot with river rock, two inches below the rim. River Rock has skyrocketed in price lately, but I was able to find it for free on Craigslist. Now you’re going to add a smaller bowl by placing it on top of the pot with the tube going through the hole in the bottom of the bowl. Take some Sugru and massage it in your hands for a minute, then make a spiral out of it, wind it around the tube and seal the hole. Sugru is a flexible silicone that will make it waterproof.
Leave everything to dry for twelve hours, then fill the top bowl with river stone all the way to the top, keeping the silicone tube in the middle straight up. Cut the pipe to the height of the stones so that it disappears. Now move it a little to the side so that it is at an angle.
Fill the bottom bowl with water to the top of the stones, then fill the top bowl completely to the top and place the solar panel on the light. You will see the top bowl begin to overflow, recirculating the water from below. It doesn’t make much noise, but it does give bees, squirrels, frogs and birds a place to drink.
How to Build a Solar Bubble Fountain
Those ground mounts were fun and all, but it’s time to move on. I kept seeing stone bubblers and, in short, I wanted to. I needed bubbles, man. I’m also cheap and there was no way I could afford $500-$2000 for one. I knew I could do it myself from parts, I just didn’t know if I could get enough power from the solar pump to get the height needed for the bubbler.
This height, or lift, is part of the specifications for each pump. I needed a few feet. I was excited to find that there are solar pumps out there that will give you that many gallons per hour (GPH) and altitude, but they were expensive too ($300).
Rarely restrained by rationality, and with a healthy fear of electrical work and no skill or experience with it, I set out to do it myself. First, I had to decide if I wanted it to work when the sun was up, or at other times too. Solar panels only work when there is sun, unless you store that energy in a battery when it’s not sunny. I wanted it to work in winter so I had to buy a battery.
Turns out you don’t want to connect the panel directly to the battery because the electricity coming in is fickle; you need something called a controller in between that acts as a kind of panel. Everything just plugs into the controller and it acts as a gateway between the panel, the battery and the pump or whatever else you’ll be connecting.
I finally found a panel with its own controller and separate battery and 410GPH pump with a six foot lift. It was a DC pump, not an AC pump, which is important since the controller is also a DC pump.
Using a small screwdriver and a couple of wire stripping tools, I first connected the panel to the controller and then, flipping the panel out of the sunlight, connected the controller to the battery to see if it would work. I always made sure my body never made a circuit, which means I never touched the positive and negative wires at the same time, and I wore gloves. This is very important not to electrocute yourself. I flipped the panel over and the lights on the controller came on to show it was working.
Next, I took the disconnected pump cord, cut off the pins, stripped the wire, and then added plus and minus to the controller. I put the pump itself in a bowl of water and then connected it to the cord. Water shot into the air. It was surprisingly nice and only cost me $150. I bought a junction box to keep it all inside, arranged it neatly, locked it and buried a twelve inch pond liner in the ground – though a five gallon bucket would have worked just fine – added a pump, filled it with rocks. , and then used a drill bit one inch wide and two feet long on a large stone given by a neighbor. I attached a ½-inch PVC pipe to the pump, threaded a stone around it, and cut the pipe to the height of the stone.
Now that you’ve learned how to control energy and water at will, you can build these solar relays anywhere you’d like to get some power in your yard for water pumps, lights, or anything else you need.