Create a DIY Rustic Birdbath Dripper and give your garden rustic pizazz as well as helping out our feathered friends. This DIY project is easy and allows you to be creative with found objects. We put it in our bird ‘sanctuary’ area on the side of the house and it is fun to watch the birds enjoying their very own water feature.
The DIY Rustic Birdbath Dripper requires 3 basic parts: A bucket to drip, a pan to catch the drips and a stand to hold the bucket. You can get creative from there. My rope handled bucket came from Hobby Lobby, the pan from Tractor Supply and the stand from old cedar fence posts found in the bar-ditch on the way to our land on the Texas Colorado River.
One note on the fence posts–be careful to choose fence posts that are not infested with termites. We brought one home only to immediately take it to the contractors’ dumpster. When we brushed off the ‘mud’, it revealed an active termite nest–yuck! Our final fenceposts lacked ‘mud’ and while dusty and adorned with dried cow patty, they were easy to clean and not gross at all.
Assembling the DIY Rustic Birdbath Dripper
Creating the stand to hold the dripper bucket was the biggest challenge in this project. We wanted to use the old cedar fenceposts, but didn’t realize that aged cedar is extremely hard and cracks easily. We have used our Makita cordless drill on some very tough projects, but the cedar was too tough to drive a screw into it. Our original idea to create a cross-bar stand was a complete failure. This meant that we had to revamp and come up with the two post system pictured here.
Bury the posts 12″ deep. We didn’t put them in cement because we think that we might need to move the dripper someday. We will keep you posted with how burying the posts without concrete works out. One thing is certain–the posts will take years to rot out as the wood is so hard.
Putting the dripper hole in the bucket was a challenge but definitely not the way you would think. The hole has to be pin prick tiny! We started with a 1/16″ drill bit. That hole resulted in a pouring stream of water and the bucket emptied in 10 minutes. We finally came up with a tiny nail used to assemble picture frames. That was still a little bit big so we patched both holes with waterproof silicone caulk and only stuck the very tip of the picture frame nail through the bucket bottom. If the hole is still too big, put a straight pin through the hole to cut the drip size down.
That is the basic assembly!
Fancied up Auto Refill Dripper Option
We have dripper hoses throughout our yard. This allows us to plant anywhere at anytime and to still be able to water each plant. See more about dripper hose landscaping in our blog on Gardening in West Texas.
We attached a 1/4″ mini dripper hose to the 1/2″ dripper hose already existing near the bird dripper post. Then, we used an micro elbow to tap into the 1/2″ dripper hose and then ran the 1/4″ hose under the mulch and up the cedar post Finally, use two micro hose clamps to hold the hose to the fence post. Cap the end of the hose with a 2 GPH compensating dripper. When the yard irrigation runs, the bucket will fill up and start dripping.