Water feature etiquette

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I have a new water feature and wondered if you left it on permanently or if you just switch it on when you are outside. I don’t want to annoy my neighbours with my raining feature!

Me and my neighbours all have water features and we all turn them off at night.

Please turn it off at night - neighbour used to have one which was left on 24/7 & it drove us mad

I like white noise but if turn it off because of electricity usage. It's like leaving a light on when you've left or gone to bed.

Please turn it off. My neighbour has one on all the time and I can hear it inside my house when the windows are open. Other neighbours can hear it too, everyone pissed off. Apparently it has to be on all the time due to her fish.

Depends if there's fish involved. If not turn it off, if there are you need to leave it on or they can suffocate at night in warmer weather.

I thought this concept went out with the 90;s clearly not.

Def turn it off. Stayed at my parents last week and neighbours had one. Was the most annoying noise I had ever heard. Also unless fully solar powered would surely be a waste of electricity over night?

Okay, off it will go!! Thanks

NaomifromMilkshake

No, it probably is, I am usually a few decades behind😂

Turning it off is the right decision. 👍🏻👍🏻

Really, my water feature has been on for the past 19 years, only turned it off when I camped in the garden with the kids and the sound of it made me need a wee! Never had any complaints.

I'm just about to get a water feature (or three) to mask the sounds of the neighbours. It'll be staying on all the time, I think!

My old neighbours had one and left it on from early spring to autumn. We actually wanted to kill them and smash the bloody thing to pieces, and I like water features.

Turn it off, please! I camped in our garden overnight last week (testing if young child is ready to go away camping) and the neighbours fake waterfall squeaked constantly all night long - by 4am I was ready to hop over the fence and smash it with a brick! (I did not actually do so).

Are they seriously annoying, then? My noisy neighbour got wind chimes for a while, and I wanted to kill her. Water’s a natural sound, though, no?

@JoinTheMicrodots yes, natural water is a natural sound... However artificial water features produce a very repetitive unnatural sound (to my ear!). I think the best comparison would be listening to the same snippet of birdsong on repeat...

Our next door neighbour has one which is on nearly all the time (not sure if it is only in the spring and summer but it’s on all the time at the moment). We sleep with the window open and when it wasn’t on a few nights ago I thought the window was shut

Have got used to it now

Thanks @Poppins2016. That’s a bit worrying, then - I’m incredibly sound sensitive, so it’ll probably irritate me more than anyone! I was hoping it would be soothing, and mask the constant racket from the neighbours - I read in a garden design book that the sound of water was good at blurring out noise. I’ve sat by a few little waterfalls recently and they were rather pleasant.

Water features definitely don't sound natural. They sound like you've left a tap on. I really deeply dislike them.

Depends if there's fish involved. If not turn it off, if there are you need to leave it on or they can suffocate at night in warmer weather

They will not die overnight. If it gets warm, then the fishpond needs to be sheltered by plants both in about out of the water and periodically topped up with cold water and dechlorinator.

I manage goldfish in a half barrel outside in Australia, shaded by aquatic and potted plants with twice-weekly very cold top-ups in the summer. No pump.

They are incredibly annoying, our neighbour’s sounds like a tap and it makes me want to go to the toilet which is particularly bad at the moment anyway as my uterus enlarged and sitting on my bladder and the bloody noise makes it worse.

MicroDots our old neighbour's one sounded like a very tall man having a wee first thing in the morning... on repeat.

Oh bugger.

And does that go for the natural 'spring burbling out of a rock' type designs as well? As opposed to the fountains/modernist cascade type water features?

I was planning something like this...

I am getting one I had no idea people found them annoying.

What is annoying about the sound out of interest? It’s just running water surely?

Note I don’t have one, but couldn’t get worked out about it either I wouldn’t have thought? (Maybe naive)