How To Winterize A Concrete Birdbath? Birds Advice

During the winter, performing everyday chores become pretty difficult, and it gets more strenuous for birds than us. Alongside struggling for food and shelter, they also need to deal with the hassle of finding water for drinking and bathing.

Contents show

So, being a bird lover, perhaps, you don’t want birdies to suffer from such misery. You can set up a birdbath in your backyard, or you might already have one installed. That being said, most bird lovers install concrete birdbaths as these are robust and spacious.

But during the winter, these bird baths tend to weaken and eventually break because of the freezing temperature. So, the question is how to winterize a concrete bird bath to extend its lifespan? Below we have discussed some of the adequate precautions.

Related Blog: 10 Birds With Green Feathers | Read here

Several Steps to Winterize Your Concrete Bird Bath

With proper care and precautions, you can prevent your concrete bird bath from breaking. Here’s how you can accomplish this job.

The first step to follow is to empty the basin and stash it upside down and wait for the weather to warm in late winter or spring.

If your bird bath doesn’t support disassembling, you can seal it with a non-toxic concrete sealer, or you can use other protective covers but make sure that they block water entirely and protect your birdbath from freezing and breaking.

The alternative method you can follow is to move your concrete bird bath from its shaded location to a wind-resistant, sunnier spot. The advantage of this method is that you can continue refilling your birdbath with water to help wild birds survive the winter.

And to keep the water from freezing, you can install a birdbath heater in your concrete birdbath. It will be better to choose a powerful heater to prevent the full bath from freezing.

However, if you don’t want to follow the above-mentioned step, you can try putting a light floating ball in the water. This ball will move gently on the water surface, preventing a small amount of water from freezing.

You can also pour the birdbath basin with hot water to hold the warm temperature for an extended duration alongside melting the ice.

Last but not least, you can line the concrete birdbath with a polyethylene sheet, which you will lift out later along with ice.

That’s how you can winterize your concrete birdbath. Now let’s discuss how you can maintain it for the long run.

How To Take Care of a Concrete Birdbath in the Winter

The common method most birders follow to keep their birdbaths clean and useful is to wash these baths with bleaching water. But there are many other practical and effortless ways. And below, we will reveal those ways:

First of all, you should empty your concrete bath at least once every week and scrub its inside surface with a robust brush and soap.

Besides, you should change the water daily.

In this way, you can keep the concrete surface clean.

These are the weekend tasks you should follow. Now, let’s talk about what you should do after noticing mildew and algae on the bird bath’s surface.

First, you need to pour one cup of white vinegar into the birdbath twice a month to remove the algae buildup.

Then, you can add more vinegar if necessary and clean the concrete birdbath.

If heavy buildups of algae, mildew, and soiling are present on the birdbath, you should scrub the concrete with a stiff brush.

Then, try to wash your birdbath with a hose.

If your birdbath has some really stubborn mold and mildew, this technique will seem to you promising. You need to make a mixture using one-fourth cup of borax and two cups of hot water.

After adding these two ingredients together, you need to pour the mixture into the concrete birdbath.

For your information, this mixture will kill mold, mildew, and other stains, no matter how stubborn they are. Finally, scrape off mildew with a brush and rinse your birdbath.

That’s all for the procedures to follow to keep your concrete birdbath in good condition. Anyway, imagine that your birdbath gets a crack even after taking good care of it and winterizing it properly.

So, what will you do then? Will you leave it as it is or try to fix it? If you choose the second option, here is how you can perform this job conveniently.

How To Fix A Crack in A Concrete Birdbath

For fixing small cracks, you can seal them with waterproofing concrete sealer or epoxy. And to fill large cracks, we recommend you go with polyester resin. You can also use cement to repair the cracks in your concrete birdbath.

Wrapping Up

Indeed, a concrete birdbath intensifies the beauty of your outdoor ambiance alongside helping wild and cheerful birds survive by providing the water. But, unfortunately, during the winter, this essential item tends to crack and fails to serve its purpose.

So, winterizing and maintaining it in a proper way can prevent this damage and extend its lifespan to a greater extent. And in this article, we have discussed everything regarding how you can take care of your concrete birdbath in the winter.

We hope you will utilize this information while working with your birdbath. Thanks for reading. Follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter to get notified right after we have posted a new article about birds.

Image Sources: