Audible pleasantness of water fountains

I'd often thought a water fountain would be nice in the back yard, for the sounds if nothing else.

Now, I actually have a water fountain, but not a big artful on in the back yard, just a small cat water fountain inside.

But so much the better, right?  Small is beautiful, right?  And, the best things are where form and function come together.  A cat fountain isn't a frill, it's an essential part of living for cat people I believe now.  I could tell the difference in my cat's behavior on the very first night.  Not so desperate to have me lift the toilet lid.

Some people complain about the noise of the little ceramic fountain I bought.  At first (it was a rainy night) I couldn't understand why.  Now, I do understand it can be a bit above the absolute silence which used to be typical.  But I can tolerate it, I might even like it, I'm not sure which.  One thing for sure, I'd like to make it better if I could.

Here's a study on the sonic characteristics of fountains that people like.

People don't like loud.  Honestly my little fountain hardly qualifies as loud in any way, particularly when hearing it from another room.  Barely audible is more like it.  SPL in another room is well below 20dBA by my estimation.  But in a quiet house, 20dBA is not nothing, the wrong sound could even be quite objectionable at that level.

People like a large random aspect (according to this study).  The little cat fountain is just a bit too steady and continuous.

I had been thinking about powering the pump with a lower DC level, which might achieve both objectives.  IMO the pump doesn't need to make the water flow as much as it does.  A very fine dripping stream would do as well as the current pencil thick continuous stream.

Update (2018):  Ultimately I found the noise of my first cat fountain (Petsafe Drinkwell Avalon) to be intolerable.  I found a similar all ceramic fountain that is virtually noise free!  It is the Youthink Cat Fountain (2.1L).

Not only is the water movement amazingly quiet (partly because of the way the water slides down the center areator) but the motor is virtually silent also, and the ceramic is beautiful and much easier to clean than the previous one.

If I do have fountain sound, it had better be outside, I have decided.

Water Fountains for Cats

My earlier feline friend, I called her Kitty, survived my care for over 15 years.  In my mind, I was doing nothing wrong…she never lacked for food or water, the best veterinary care, etc.  I fed her what I thought (at the time) was the best food of all, Science Diet.  Like many cats that survive that long on dry cat food, she ultimately developed kidney disease, and before her final termination, was being taken to the vet periodically for overnight water injections to keep her going.  It was through this experience that I learned that there is a problem getting cats to drink enough water if they are eating dry food.  If they are eating wet food it's easier because they simply get most of the water needed from the food itself.  In the wild, cats get most or all of their water that way, and their instinct appears to be not to trust still water.

Now I'm worried about my new feline companion Augie.  He actually gets a treat of 1/4 to 1/2 can daily (which he generally eats only about half of), and right now, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong.  I'd give him more canned food, but while he likes having me or my lady friend give him some canned food, he  seems much more interested in actually eating the dry food (Iams, which my friend feeds all her cats).  The wet food he mainly likes to shove around with his tongue (apparently absorbing the moisture…) leaving dehydrated muck.  The dry food he will actually polish off.

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong, but I can't really tell since he goes outside for one to six hours every night (up to six hours on weekends, but usually no more than 2 hours on weekdays) he does almost all of his business out there, so he hardly uses the litter box at all.  This is not a problem, except that I can't determine whether he is getting enough water or not, since I have no way of seeing how much he is urinating or spraying.  And since he usually only goes out once per day, I wondered why he was not using the box anyway.  Typically cats urinate 2-4 times per day, but it also appears that cats can hold urine for up to 48 hours, so going 22 hours wouldn't be impossible, even if he is perfectly healthy.  He has a perfect and perfectly clean litter box inside (which has has used many times before) but days go by before there is the least little bit in the box to clean out.

Anyway, in the spirit of doing everything I can, even if there isn't any specific knowledge that I must do something now, I'm pushing ahead.  Since food is now available at two locations in the house, I have put water bowls in both locations also.  And now I've taken the big plunge and gotten my cat a Cat Water Fountain, which I've heard my vet and other people mention as the number one thing to do to help encourage cats to drink more.  I got the Drinkwell Ceramic Avalon Fountain.  It gets very high ratings generally but some note that it is noisier than others, however as sensitive to noise as I am (very much so) it doesn't bother me because it is in the front bedroom (the Queen's Room) and as I am passing by all I hear is a pleasant water tinkling sound, the kind of sound one might have just for its own sake.  I probably wouldn't want this in my own bedroom, or the living room (where the stereo is) either, but in the front bedroom I can just barely hear it, if at all, in any other room anyway.

Here is a list of cat fountains that I chose from.

Relative Humidity and Dewpoint

Great discussion here.  I'm buying the cheapest recommended dew point meter.

I have electronic humidity meter with daily min-max in the kitchen and look at it frequently nowadays.

The Carrier Infinity system does a pretty good job of keeping humidity below set point (56%) even on days that are cool or merely warm, and even with continuous low fan.  (With my previous system, I had to turn off the continuous fan during this kind of weather to keep indoor humidity from going through the roof.)  Though I wish it had more user-accessible fine tuning.  I can turn on/off the supercool feature which cools up to 3 degrees below set temperature to keep humidity down.  In practice, it very rarely does more than one degree of supercooling.  I'd like to be able to set 1,2,3 degrees of supercooling.  Sometimes I have to turn off the supercooling (because it's chilling too much) even though I still need some humidity control, just not as much.  The infinity will even attempt to control humidity by other means if you turn off supercooling, but it won't be very effective unless cooling is needed.  This makes me wonder about whether a dedicated dehumidifier wouldn't be a good idea sometimes.

I have a 1 gallon humidifier I run on dry nights which does an acceptable job of keeping humidity above 30% on very cold nights.  My feeling is that you don't need to seek optimal humidity, but when it's going below 35% it helps to start humidifying a bit.  Not too much.  Too much, or trying to track some optimal value like 45% could lead to mold accumulation in poorly built areas of the building envelope.  On the very coldest nights I run the humidifier on high and it needs to be refilled every 6 hours or so.  Even if it runs out while I'm asleep, however, it's done a wonderful job of keeping the air from becoming horribly dry.