Solar Fountains Make Sense

Author: Jennifer R Scott
Source: ezinearticles.com

If you are looking for a distinctive feature to add to your yard, there are a few choices that fit the bill. You could build a luxurious deck, a place to gather family and friends in the summer, enjoy the evening breeze and watch the sunset. You could build a pool, creating a place to escape the worst of the summer heat. But neither of those options adds greenery or life to your yard. A deck is a stoic, unchanging place, and a pool in the end is little more than a hole in the ground filled with water.

If your goal in adding to your yard is to enhance the feeling of being outside, you have a different set of options. You could add one or more trees, but trees take years to reach their full impact, and the older the tree you buy is, the more complex planting it becomes. You could go with a planted bed of shrubs, flowers, and other decorative plants, but they are heavy on maintenance. You could set up a water feature such as a fountain or pond, but they require extensive wiring to ensure good water circulation and filtration.

There is an option however to cut out the downsides of installing a fountain or pond: install a solar powered fountain. The power required to run a filter and pump is relatively small, and the fountain itself can have the paneling built into the rockwork, allowing you to add the vitality of running water to your yard without having to run wiring from the house or adding to your monthly electric bill.

The small panels in solar fountains collect sunlight and utilize it to run the pump that makes your fountain or waterfall flow. It can even collect more power than it takes to run the pump, and store that in a batter so that it can run during the evening, when the sun doesn’t provide enough light to power the system directly. The system is completely self-contained, so you don’t have to dig a trench across your yard to bury wires, and you don’t have to worry about rainy weather shorting out your system. You also don’t need to have a comprehensive working knowledge of household circuitry, since a solar fountain runs on the much simpler DC that solar panels create.

In a nutshell, solar fountains give you the benefit of a fully functional water feature with much less long term cost and maintenance. They allow you to add more of an outdoors ambiance to your yard without turning it into an animal sanctuary. They are civilized, yet retain their wild side. They are perfect for the yard that aims to be a yard, and not just an extra room in your house that happens to lack a roof or air conditioning.

Jennifer R. Scott has been writing for over ten years on a broad range of topics. She has a background that includes such diverse areas as environmentalism, cooking, animal care, and technology. If you would like more information on solar fountains, a site with great environmentally friendly home improvement options.