Yes, this fountain is battery powered and when the nice people from Hydria emailed me and asked if I would like one to review I could not say yes fast enough, I was intrigued.
I have not paid for this product nor have I been paid to write this review. My words and opinions are entirely my own. Regular readers will know that I am not keen having electric wires trailing around the garden and that I am a big fan of solar lights etc. So this fountain which is battery powered was very interesting to me.
The fountain arrived in a rather smart looking box. I quickly opened it up. This fountain kit is designed to sit in any pot of 30cm diameter and around 20 cm deep. The pot you use can of course be larger than this. You will just need to add more bedding materials to keep it at the level you want and to keep it stable/level. If you have not got a pot already they have a nice offer that when you buy one you get a 20% voucher to buy a pot from a Blue Diamond Garden Centre of which there are many dotted around mainly England. In the box you get the bowl and the battery housing, a couple of different fountain heads, a cleaning brush and a spirit level. There is a 'decorative tray' that sits over the top of the bowl that you can arrange stones/pebbles whatever you want to use to make the top look even prettier.My first thought was that I was unsure how practical this all was. Surely the batteries would get wet and be a pain to change when they ran out?
Of course this is not powered by that type of battery. You charge up the battery (which took about 5 hours) and then you are ready to go.The kits says it takes 10 minutes to set up. To set up the actual fountain and get it working me be around five minutes, it is that easy. The choosing of the pot and setting that up took a little longer, I had a moment of pot-indecision!Once the choice was made I then started to set up the pot ready for the fountain. I learned a long time ago that when making something that could turn out to be heavy you assemble it in the position where you want it to be. I wanted this fountain to be in sight of the kitchen window in with the group of pots of roses and my ginkgo tree.The chosen pot is quite deep so I filled the bottom with some polystyrene packaging I had not disposed of yet.I then put in some compost to bed the bowl in.Next I popped in the battery, filled the bowl with water and then started the fun bit.
The decorative tray was put in position and a layer of stones was applied. Then I had to decide which fountain head I was going to use first.
First I tried what I would call a traditional 'upwards' fountain. This is very pretty to look at and I like it a lot.
At night you can switch on different coloured lights in the fountain. You can choose between red, green purple and blue. This makes a lovely effect. Not only can I see the fountain from my kitchen window, the remote control works through the kitchen window. This means I can choose what it looks like and switch it on and off without having to go outside.
Next I tried the 'downward' fountain head. Visually, if I am being honest, I am not sure I like it as much as the upward one, but it makes the nicest sound. At the moment sound is winning over vision but the beauty of this kit is that I can change my mind and ring the changes whenever I feel like it. You also get a couple of different length connector tubes so you can raise or lower the height of the fountain head as much or as little as you wish.
But how long does the battery last I hear you ask? Well to begin with I just left the fountain switched on 24/7. I did not switch it off at all and it lasted almost exactly one week. In reality though I will not be leaving it on all day all night as this is a waste of battery. It is so easy to control that I only have it on when I am at home and I switch it off when I shut the curtains in the kitchen at night. The website says the battery can last up to 30 days and this does not seem impossible from my experience so far.
The fountain can be used as an indoor or an outdoor feature. The remote control lets you control the flow of the fountain at three different heights, so you can choose the height that is most visually pleasing to you and make it sure it only splashes back into the bowl. I did find that in the very hot weather that the water does evaporate. When the water level in the bowl gets a bit low funnily enough it means that the fountain gets less water/force. A quick top up and everything is fine again and an added bonus is that it is not a huge bowl of water so it does not take long to fill and does not use lots of water.
The Hydria All in One Fountain at the time of writing retails at £199 and I think this is good value for what it is. It is well made, well thought through and it brings joy. This fountain won New Product of the Year 2022 at GLEE earlier this year and I can totally see why.
Take care and be kind.
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