Revamp BH Completed

Due to my consultant busy schedule, he only started renovating my ground floor BH + revamping my 2nd floor BH last Friday. He managed to complete the job within a week. Sadly I do not have change to go through the renovating process. My kids exams are coming and I have to stay back in Singapore to go through revision with them.   

I have asked my brother help to take some of pictures and I will share with you all here.

Before Renovation - Messy

After Renovation - Super clean and added more planks with full corner plank.

Before Renovation - tweeters near corner planks

Before Renovation - A lot of fake nests, nests and birds

After Renovation - Old tweeters replaced by his tweeters. Birds, nests and fake nests all GONE!!! A bit worry whether the birds will come back or not.

No more 12x12 roving area.

The Consultant threw all the old tweeters but still keep the Bullet Bazooka.

My New Project

After meeting the consultant and also visited BH done by him, there are a lot of things that I still need to learn. The consultant said the entrance of BH has to be made like a "Highway", so that the birds can fly in smoothly. I guess a lot of people already know the important of smooth entrance design, but how smooth is smooth? Different definition will affect how we design the smooth entrance?

Beside the entrance design, there are a lot of small little things that done by the consultant which I believe a very important factor for the BH Success. For Example, Vent hole design. He did not use PCV pipe. He also cleverly make use of internal light to extract birds and use ventilation fan with timer to control the BH ventilation.

I also checked some other BH done by the consultant. Among them are my wife's cousin BH. I called him to find out more about his BH and the consultant. He told me that after 1 year, the nests already reach 60 to 80 nests. Consider the location is still not the prime area, I think the results are very good.

After all those studies, I decided to let him convert my old BH ground floor to BH and also revamp my old BH on upper floor. For those who interested to find out more, you can either call or email me. 02-91275446 or cheinwoei.gee@gmail.com

Mysteries BH - Corner Plank & Fake Nest

The Consultant uses corner planks for all the corner area. In other word, you can't find any 90degC angle corner in the BH. This is very different from what common practice whereby we start with 90degC corner and add plank after the birds start making the nests. According to his experience, if we put the corner plank after the nests build for 2 or more times, the chances that the birds will stay at the corner is very slim. He want to do it Right and Right at the Beginning.

There is no single fake nests found in the BH. I did invite him to visit my old BH. When he saw the paper fake nests and other type of fake nests, this was what he told me: "No doubt fake nest will help the young birds to make nest faster, but once you remove it, there is no 100% guarantee that the birds will come back again." I agreed with him as I experienced the same things.

He then continued: "Nest grow should be linear or exponential grow. You want it to be positive grow all the time. You do not want to see once the fake nest is changed to another location or removed, the birds do not like its "house" being moved and refuse to make the nest. Then your nest count will be like Zig-zag shape."

Do it Right and Right at the Beginning.

Mysteris BH Visit - Plank

Last weekend, I have opportunity to visit the Mysteries BH myself.

The BH using 3 Amplifiers instead of 2. 1 internal, 1 external and 1 pulling sound (I guess). As I said before, the tweeters are really very few inside the BH.

The BH using very good quality of Dark Red Meranti. The height is 5" instead of 6" that we normally use. The planks were installed such that it perpendicular with the birds flying path.

Mysteris BH - Amplifier & Songs

The BH only using 2 normal Amplifiers (Note the photo above just for illustration only). 1 higher power amp for internal and lower power amp for external.

I guess the internal and external sounds really good.

The BH setup is so simple yet effective.

Mysteris BH - Tweeters

Remembered I mentioned about the mysterious BH that has > 20 nests in just 4 months? I have no chanced to take a look personally what so special in the BH, but my friend took a lot of photo and showed it to me.

In this article, I will cover all about the Tweeters that use in the BH.

We know birds like song from the tweeters. They normally start making their nests near or at the tweeters. Because of this behavior, there is command perception that the more the tweeters the merrier.

Below are what I found out about the tweeters of the BH:-
1. Number of tweeters/floor - < 50pcs
2. Tweeter type - Piezo
3. Tweeter Quality - Good
4. With Capacitor - 4.7uF connector in series.
5. Tweeter arrangement - All facing entrance
6. Cluster -No cluster.

The results are, all the nests built near or at the tweeters.
I was very surprise to see the tweeters setup and the results that he got. My question is, does the number of tweeters help to improve the nests quantity or the quality of the tweeters? I urge those are reading this article, please write down your personnel experience about the Tweeters Setup in the comment. Hopefully the comments are a lot and we can made some conclusion.

What is the Function of Capacitor on Tweeter?

I have been receiving a lot of questions on use of capacitor on tweeter. What is the use of capacitor? How can that improve the quality of sound? What is the value to use? How to connect to tweeter?

I found a very good website below that explain the use of capacitor in speaker and how to select the good value.

www.bcae1.com/passxovr.htm

Anyway, I will try to breifly explain what is the use of capacitor on tweeters.

1. Function of capacitor - it act as a high pass filter which means it will block low freq components and let the high freq components pass through. Capacitor will attenuate the low freq at 6dB/Octave.

2. How to improve the sound quality - birds sound freq around 1KHz to 16KHz. With the right value of capacitor, the low freq components < 1KHz will be filtered off to give clear birds sound.

3. What value to use? - That depend on what type of tweeter you use. For Magnetic Tweeter, the nominal impendance is around 4ohm to 8 ohm. Assume 8ohm impendance is used and the cut-off freq is 900Hz, so you need to use around 22uF capacitor.

For Piezo tweeter, theoritically no cap is needed as piezo itself is capacitance in natural. It has around 0.12uF. If you refers to its impedance chart, the value from 100ohm at 20Hz to around 25ohm at 20KHz. That means it itself will block most of the low freq components. But if you insist to use capacitor, you can use 4.7uF to 10uF value.

4. What type of capacitor? - Use non polar, 100V capacitor.

5. How to connect? - Solder in series in positive terminal.

Hope the information help.

New BH Update End July

Last weekend I went back to Melaka and inspected my new BH myself. There are 3 nests already have baby inside. Total 7 nests and 8 markings.

Any idea what type of house the birds like to start their family?

1st pair of baby born in this house using fake nest.


2nd pair of baby birds born in the Pure Nests House...


3rd pairs of baby birds born in the fake nest make of Styrofoam.

3 families with 3 different houses....Birds are too choosy :)

This time I also installed a Super Bullet that I bought back from recent US trip (2 Bullet bazooka at the bottom). I will only start selling if the new tweeter proven good.

Heat Insulator Paint

Now a day the weather is very hot. Even though I am using Rockwool to insulate my roof, I find my average temp reading is around 29degC and max is 31.5degC. Maybe the Rockwool's density that I used not high enough, I decided to try Heat Insulator Paint.

The roof temperature can go down to about 8degC. I hope the BH average temp can go down to 28degC. I will post the data logger reading once I go back this weekend.

If you interested on the Heat Insulator Paint, please email me... cheinwoei.gee@gmail.com

New BH Update July

Now has 4 full nests and 1 with eggs. There are >10 markings. More work to do....

I am going back this weekend to Melaka. Hope I can talk to my friend and understand what the Magic that his consultant did.

Mystery Spot

I am back to Singapore. Last 2 weeks I was visiting a place called Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz. It is a tilted house at the hill slope.

Well, what is that got to do with BH? I guess a lot of people especially those new in this industrial find the swiftlet industrial is a mystery industrial. There is no standard...... 2 people build the Bird house at same area which meet the good micro and design condition may not able to get the same results. It safe to say that no consultant can guarantee 100% success when they design your BH. What is the Mystery or Secret behind to some successful BH.

I have a friend engaged a consultant to convert his shop lot to BH at 10km away from my new BH. He started his BH around the same time as mine new BH. His consultant keep his BH key for 1 year. After 4 months, my friend BH has > 20 nests. That is very good compare to mine which only 3 nests.

From his photo, i can see that his BH uses:-
1. Good Dark Red Meranti Plank
2. Not many tweeters (not sure what brand)
3. No cluster tweeters (4 or more tweeters tight together)
4. All Tweeters facing same direction
5. No humidifier
6. No aroma (as far as he know)
7. Simple internal design.
8. No VIP room

I hope next week, I have chanced to understand more about the Mystery of his BH. Things that I would like to know is how many Amp he use? How many type of sounds he is playing.

New BH after 4 months

3 full nests for last month. This results better than my old one but still not good enough. I will talk about my friend BH which started same times as me but has > 20 nests.