I have a very small urban backyard. I have a small fountainin the yard with a recirculating pump. I’ve lived here almost a year and the fountain is one of the first things I set up.
*Background which may not be relevant to current problem: *The first recirculating pump I bought at Home Depot simply stopped working after a couple of months. I replaced it twice. The last one stopped working the other day right in front of my eyes–it just quit. I had a slightly larger fountain at my former home and in 15 years, I only had to replace that pump once. Anyway, I went on amazon and looked at pumps and found one that seemed to have more longevity than the ones I’d been getting at HD. BTW, at no time did the fountain run dry. The pumps ceased while they were still submerged in water.
*Current problem: *This is just weird. I set up the new pump yesterday morning in a bowl identical to the one pictured, which holds maybe 3-4 gallons. During the day, the water level went waaaaay down. This had never happened before and I didn’t know why it happened, But I filled the bowl up and came back later and the water level was waaaaay down again. I wondered if maybe the bowl (which is almost a year old) had a little crack in it? So I went this morning and got a new bowl and put the new pump in it. I started the pump this morning and looked at the fountain from time to time and all looked well.
This evening about 5 pm I went to walk the dogs and before we left, I looked and the bowl was full of water. We got back 20 minutes later and the bowl was half empty. WTF? I filled the bowl and came inside, ate dinner, watched some TV, and then thought maybe I’d better go out and take a look. Sure enough, the bowl was half empty.
So I unplugged it and came in here to consult with my consultants (that would be y’all.)
You can see from the first picture that my backyard is MINUSCULE. Tiny. Small. In that picture, you are seeing the whole thing. It is completely fenced. Yeah, there are a couple of squirrels. Occasionally a neighbor cat will get in the yard. Doves and grackles drink the water. But a couple of GALLONS in TWENTY MINUTES? It’s not like I have elk, deer, or grizzly bears climbing over the chain link and guzzling water.
It didn’t get over 75 today so it wasn’t evaporation. Anyway, during the summer, it was routinely over 100 and water didn’t disappear like this.
And why did this start happening just when I got a new pump?
This new pump is slightly more powerful than the old pumps that kept breaking down. I have the height of the water dialed down so it’s an energetic gurgle just above the surface of the water by about three inches, not a replica of Old Faithful. IOW the water is not spraying so high that it’s splashing outside the bowl.
The only thing that seems possible is that something is *drinking *the water. But what creature would drink that much water in a short time without me seeing it? The new bowl definitely does not have any holes or cracks in it. It is glazed inside and out, so this isn’t evaporative loss.
This is just weird. Any ideas?