Pioneer Pet Stainless Steel Fountain Raindrop Design

You'll see alot of back and forth on this in the reviews, but it's overall a pretty darn good product. And the price can't be beat. One thing that many of the negative reviews seem to revolve around is insufficient cleaning. This is an open pool of water. It gets bugs, cat hair, saliva, dust, and other household things in it. It needs to be cleaned out regularly. Fortunately, their design is _very_ easy to clean. Even taking apart the electric motor and cleaning it is much, much simpler than it sounds (mostly because you dont really take it apart, the motor is sealed, you just remove and clean the impeller/propeller). Based on my experience, with the necessary maintenance, this thing runs really well. And I find my cat drinks much more water because of it. Things to watch out for: - Dump the water, take it apart, and clean it weekly. This takes no more than 10 minutes. - Pioneer Pet has solid videos on how to clean the main unit, and how to take apart and clean the motor. It's really much easier than you will expect. Pump Maintenance 101 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYyTFv_u3Sw - I don't find that I need to take the motor apart and clean the impeller every week, it can be done once or twice a month, in my experience. - Change the filters monthly. This is about a $3/month expense. They may be good for longer, I'm not sure how to tell. - Use the cleanest water you can. Bottled, purified, reverse-osmosis, soft, whatever you have available. The cleaner the water, the longer the thing will go between cleanings. One thing to watch out for: I had the motor stop working after about 2 months. I was frustrated thinking it was not very high quality, etc. Turns out that a cat hair had gotten down in and wound around the impeller. Once I took it apart and wiped down the impeller, it worked like a charm. Lastly, and this has nothing to do with the product itself, but if you're getting one of these to try to get your cats to drink more water, placement is very important. Put this in a high traffic area, where your cat hangs around near it, or passes by it many times a day. That will hugely improve the likelihood of it being drank from often. EDIT To add two more notes: 1. In my house, I find that I add a coffee-cup amount of water most days. You don't have to, it'll go a few days before getting low enough that the water flow suffers, but I find it easy to just fill up a coffee cup with water and dump it in. I live in the desert, so very low humidity, but also only have one cat. YMMV. 2. The top piece will occasionally rattle a little bit. This is the only noise making part of the fountain. The majority of the time, this is resolved just by tapping the top pieces, which moves it enough that it stops rattling. I'll probably go get a small tube of food-safe silicon caulking and just put a couple tiny dabs on the lip where the lid sits on, to buffer the metal on metal contact. In any case, the noise is usually very minor.

Both my cats love drinking from this elegant, stainless steel fountain. People who say it gets "gunked up" aren't cleaning it properly. If you have lime or other minerals in your water, it will start to have mineral deposits. Because this is food-grade stainless steel, you can clean it with vinegar and Brillo soap pads. Just be sure to thoroughly wash out the lingering soapy smell. People who say it's noisy might be putting it in spot where the floor isn't 100% level. I find that adjusting it a bit on my floor (house was built in 1958) gets rid of any vibrational sound. I set it on a thick plastic mat under it to prevent spills landing on my hardwood floor, and I think this also reduces vibration, which might cause it to be noisy. Also, the pump inside needs to be set just right to be quiet, and the water level has to be kept up to where the fountain has enough water to be silent. When I hear the fountain making a noise, I know the water level is too low and as soon as I fill it up, the pump gets quiet again. I've had this fountain for 4 years now and the only part I have had to replace is the filter., and those are durable enough to last a bit beyond the 1 month time limit, although for the health of your cats you really should change it on time. Overall, this fountain was worth every penny I paid for it. I had tried plastic fountains before this one, and my cats rejected all of them. This fountain deserves the "paw print of approval."

I had a 2.5 gallon automatic water before I bought this. He seemed to enjoy drinking out of the toilet bowel more than the automatic waterer. Even if the bathroom doors were shut all day, and his only water supply was the automatic waterer, he still wouldn't drink from it. I think he prefers the toilet over the automatic waterer because it's fresher cooler water. That's why I bought this. The filter would filter out debris and the running water would keep it cool. If your dog is a slob like mine, keep the food bowel a few feet away from the water bowel. It will filter out debris but large chucks of dog food will clog things up. My dog is a slob and when he goes from the food bowel to the water bowl, chucks of his food end up in the water bowel and I have to clean the bowel more often. My only issue with this is I have to keep refilling it. My 80lb Belgian malinois drinks A LOT of water. Probably close to two of these bowels a day. He seems to drink more than other dogs his size. Cleanup is easy enough. The bowel itself is easy to clean, but the white plastic enclosure has some corners that may need a brush. I have a sprayer faucet and it works just fine when I just hot water. There are only three parts that you have to remove from the pump, and it's easy. There is a YouTube video on how to clean it at: [...] I didn't have any problems with it. The plastic enclosure around the pump might be the first thing that breaks, but it hasn't done it yet. The pump is quiet except when the water gets low. Once it gets to about a quarter full, you start to hear the pump. Once it has less than a half inch of water left, it gets really loud. Refilling it with water will quiet it down, but depending on how long it's been low, it might take a minute for the noise to go away. I generally clean this when I replace the filter. I usually do that every 2-3 weeks depending on how the pump is pumping. If you experience a decrease in pump performance, a lot of times it's because a chunk of food is blocking the hole. Opening the plastic container will free it and it will pump again. If that doesn't work, check the filter and see if it's filled with debris. The next step would be to clean the pump. Always clean the pump when you clean the bowel and this bowel will last you. Even though this has been great so far, I'm going to have to sell it and upgrade to the Pioneer Fountain Big Max because my dog drinks so much. I'm hoping the bigger one will work just as well. They both use the same filter.

Il est vrai que si, à la base, le prix m'avait fait hésiter, je suis ravie d'avoir choisi cette fontaine à eau pour mes deux chats. Très esthétique, d'une forme sobre, elle est surtout d'une facilité incroyable pour le nettoyage, facile à rincer, le remplacement de la cartouche se fait aussi très facilement, elle n'est pas bruyante du tout. Très stable, entièrement démontable, vous pouvez passer le récipient au lave vaisselle. Rien à voir avec les précédentes fontaines que j'avais achetées, toutes en plastique, difficilement démontable, fragiles, et d'un entretien fastidieux, avec brosses, etc. Là, rien de tout cela, en quelques minutes, vous avez une fontaine impeccable, solide (tout est en inox), très fonctionnelle. Je recommande vivement ce produit pour sa qualité, sa solidité et sa fonctionnalité.

aunque hay que tener cuidado con la disposición del cable eléctrico, tiene la gran ventaja de ser metálico y de tener una espacio donde repose el agua en caso de corte eléctrico, para que sirva al menos de bebedero clásico. los filtros son un poco particulares por otro lado, habrá que ver que continuidad tienen.

Just to clarify, only top part is stainless steel. Bottom part (pot) in the model we received was plastic. The other comment is that fountain is splashing a lot if you put the pump on higher speed. Our cats use fountain much more when is higher stream, unfortunately in that case fountain is loud and it splash.

but the only problem is that we need to purchase a transformer to bring the voltage down to 110V

Very impressed with this, it's near silent operation is a huge bonus, it looks like a little piece of art which is an improvement on the ugly plastic one we had previously, it's also much easier to clean as there are only two main parts to it and as it's stainless steel it won't harbour germs either. It comes with a spare pump but it will still last well as the pumps are available from garden centres and pet stores so you certainly wouldn't have to dispose of it like the previous two we've had, would go for this above all the others, the best part is our cat loves it!