Homedics Illuminated Tabletop Fountain
As any good insomniac will tell you, white noise can be helpful to someone trying to fall asleep. I normally enjoyed the sounds of either frogs or crickets, live, right outside my bedroom. The constant soothing noise helped lull me back to sleep after the multiple times a night I awoke. However, the sounds I relied on so much were cut off when a bathroom remodel placed a new wall between the helpful nocturnal critters and me.
The new bathroom was wonderful, but the new silence was devastating to my sleep patterns. Now, waking was a disaster because I was unable to get back to sleep. To add to the problem, every tiny snore and snuffle my spouse made was amplified in the silence as if it were being broadcast through speakers. I quickly realized I had to do something to replace the crickets and frogs. Since I was unwilling to bring either species into my bedroom to provide live noise, I began shopping for a mechanical alternative.
I considered a “white noise machine”, noting that there were different kinds available, but decided to try to stay within a stricter budget – I would allow myself twenty dollars to spend and see what I could come up with. I saw that tabletop fountains were often within my budget and were available at a wide variety of locations, so I started shopping specifically for an indoor water fountain.
What I was initially attracted to in a tabletop fountain was a stream tumbling down several levels in a cascade effect. My thinking was that this would provide more of the “trickling stream” sound I was seeking. This was my best guess, since at all the stores I’d been to, there were no fountains being demonstrated with water – they were all set up dry. After window-shopping at several stores, I found a fountain that was designed to drop a stream of water down over several sculpted metal leaves. I decided to purchase it, and set it up that evening. To my disappointment, the effect of the stream dropping several short levels was to dampen the noise, rather than enhance it as I had imagined. The water made very little noise at all, in fact, and because of this I took it down, packed it up and returned it to the store.
Fortunately, my next decision was much easier – the store had set up the tabletop fountain display to actually run with water, and now I could tell which fountains would provide the soothing trickling sound I wanted. I chose one that had a single, simple spout and poured down into a small pool from a height of about eight inches. This was the Homedics Illuminated Tabletop Relaxation Fountain, by Envirascape.
The Homedics tabletop fountain was easy to set up and fill. The fountain pump is very quiet. I have found that the sound the cascading water creates is exactly what I was hoping for, and it is very relaxing to concentrate on the trickling when I need to get to sleep. I can adjust the quality of the sound if I wish by placing a small stone beneath the mesh splash guard for the water to tumble onto, thus giving me some control over the assertiveness of the noise – I can have a trickle, or a splash, depending on how I adjust it and how high I fill the pool. I am very pleased with not only the performance of the Homedics tabletop fountain, but also that it fit into my budget, allowing me to reclaim the peaceful sleep I needed without overspending. The Homedics fountain was an effective solution to my problem, and I recommend it to anyone who is thinking of adding the soothing sounds of water to their environment.
