Bringging Those Swiftlet From One Floor To The Other: It Is Easier Say than Done !!

(They avoid flying low since they have a kind of distorted legs which will not allow them to jump)

I am not trying to make you feel discouraged or angry with any bad decisions you made on your BH LAL location.

Not: LAL refers to the connecting hole or door between the higher floor and the lower floor.

It you have made the right choice in selecting the proper location to open the LAL you might want to know that those birds will have the final say.

For the new BH at Salak Tinggi Sepang Selangor I wish to share my problem with the exact thing about pulling them into the LAL.

Yesterday during my free time (I am having a small fever and running nose after returning home from Kemaman) I dropped by to change the external sound at Salak Tinggi.

The owner installed a three channels CCTV camera and I was using it to know how many birds will enter the BH with a few different sound.

Tried a few and the best for this BH with a lot of birds entering was the "Marvelous Cloud" and "Super Vacuum" .

They entered the roving room and started to head towards the door connecting the room to the nesting area.

They came in and flew above the LAL.

Yes the LAL was right below where all the birds will fly inside and outside.

What disappoint me was that not a single bird came downstairs.

All seems to fly to the back of the top floor and none showed any indication of flying to the lower floor.

This can be a good lesson to all about how important is the selection of LAL in your BH.

Remember even you put it at the right location with 100% birds flying above it does not mean that any will fly downstairs.

Just imagine if you select a wrong location?

It will be a bigger disaster.

The only thing that I think can make them to come done are the followings:

1) Give them a few more weeks and see if they will start exploring the lower floor.

2) Control the sound volume of the lower (louder) floor and the upper floor (lesser volume).

3) Try to have a separate cable line for tweeters installed around the LAL frame. If you do try to get the external sound louder.

4) The last resort is to erect an enclosure (temporary) around the LAL and force the first batch of birds to the lower floor.  This would mean that your BH is not opened in total but only the lower floor.

I add a few more ideas but for the moment the above are something that might activate you mind to think of any other ways to lure those birds to the lower floor(s).

A Tale Of Two BHs Back To Back !!!

      (Two BHs in a row.  The one at the back is using water spraying on the wall to cool the BH)

While repairing the Kemaman BH I remember asking the owner about the second unit just at the back.

The interesting thing that I happened to watch was the number of birds visiting this BH as compared to the one that I was repairing.

Most of the birds around will fly to the front unit and a few, the left over, will be visiting the BH.

There must be something not right with this replica.

I wondered who was the owner and why they are spraying water on the wall.

The answer was something like this:

"Pak Harry the owners of that BH are some investor who have extra money but have little idea about swiftlet farming. They build it and keep their finger crossed.  If they are lucky they will see some result but if it does not perform they will have an empty BH."  his response.

The BH was erected and put into operation about 6-7 months ago.

Main problem was the gap between the two layer walls.  It was too small and not insulated with any insulator.

The only was out was to install a number of water nozzles spraying water from a nearby lake about 5 times a day.

The walls looks wet all the time but a bit dirty with some kind of growth.

My main questions were:

Does the system works?

What if the pump failed to work?

What if the electrical supply failed?

What if the weather is so hot and the pond dried up?

What kind of monthly electricity bill is the pump consuming?

On the long run will this system works without any distruption?

I don't really have the answer but I think the method used is not a very good choice.

There are so many other better method and one of the method was the use of heat insulation technique which I have recently deployed inside the BH just in front of it.

My next point of concern was about the direction of the main entrance hole.

It was facing the west and I think by now all my blog reader knows the answer what will happen inside.

Those birds if they stayed in will not populate the back area.  They will stay as closed as possible to the main entrance area to get the early morning light.

There was one more thing that I was concerned about.

There was no hexagonal tweeter in front or at the back of the BH.

If you installed a hexagonal tweeter on the roof you will be able to get the attention of more birds to come over.

I guess the owner might want to do something like what I did with the one in front.

We shall see the result and compare which one will out perform the other.

Enjoy some pictures taken while walking around the BH.

Three Phone Calls And Three BHs Needs My Help !!!

After completing the revamp operation at Kemaman I came home for a short break.

Most of my joints were in pain.  My temperature went up and my nose starts flowing.

I think I am sick.

I need some Viagra .......

Anyway while resting at home there were a few interesting calls that will keep myself busy for the next few months.

The first call was from the same BH owner from Kemaman.

When are you coming down to start work on my 2nd BH?

Maybe this Monday. Let me take a good rest and will mobilize my workers on this Monday.

He was very excited if I could start as early as I can.

But my whole body is painful.  Maybe I got a flue or something like that.

Hope by Sunday I will be better.

The second call was from the Maran BH owner.

"Pak Harry I would like you to start work on my BH but I need some discount."

I told him about my not being well and I would love to do up his BH as soon as I finished the job in Kemaman, the second unit.

The third call was from a BH owner whose 1st BH was in Jenjarum Selangor.

He owned another BH somewhere closed to Kemaman and currently occupied with 500 nests.

"Pak Harry are you in Kemaman this weekend?  I plan to drive up there and would like to have you inspection services done on my BH in Kemaman."

I promised him that I will be in Kemaman on Monday and will be most happy to take a look at his BH.

He started following my blog about one year ago and have tried a number of ideas I wrote and they are proving to work.

"Pak Harry after doing up the walls you suggested during your visit to my Jejarum BH, I immediately got two new nests. They really works." his precise words about his BH latest performance.

I told him that I am very honored to have suggested those interesting ideas and it works.

This is where I got the trill.

I know most of those ideas are more like those from a person with practical experiences.

They are not by trial and error but more like being tested many many times and once it works I will introduce them to all my blog readers.

Heat Insulation Works Inside Kemaman BH !!!

 (Heat shield installation on the West wall)

Let me give you the exact details on the heat insulation works carried out inside Kemaman BH.

During my first visit to the BH the owner was showing me around and he gave me some report about the nesting room temperature of his BH.

It seems that he installed a gadget to monitor the exact humidity and temperature for a couple of weeks.

His summary was as follows:

"The temperature will start to rise sharply from 8pm till 10pm and after that it will stabilized with downward trend after that.  The highest temperature he recorded was above 31*C".

Why listening to him I told him about the method I adopted in Salak Tinggi BH using this heat shield that will make all the affected walls to be at 29*C or lower.

He quickly snap with the word "Ok Pak Harry I want that to be carried out in my BH".

Since the highest was above 31*C I told him that usually if the higher floor is 31*C the floor below it will be about 30*C.

To minimize the overall cost I suggested that we should apply the heat shield method only for the top floor.

That was how the heat shield installation started its history inside this Kemaman BH.

The moment my boys arrived I told them to concentrate on the heat shield.

We got the heat shield rolls ready, ordered some woods (2"x2" X 12 feet.) and about 110 pieces of ceiling boards (4'X4'X3mm).

I told them to start on the wall facing the west and move to the one to the south and finish with the east wall.

They did just that.

What I like about this method of heat shielding is that it is very simple, quick and less messy.

My worker will erect the wood frame about 4' apart and installed a number of crossing 4' apart and stapled the heat shield materials.

Once the heat shield is in place the cement boards will be nailed to act as protection from any possible damage.

The surface on the cement board will be always 29*C or lower.

We have monitored the temperature inside the affected room and it was below 30*C.

A very quick and effective way of cooling down your nesting room.

If you need to learn more let me know.

Call 017 7551318.

 (The Frame of 4'X4' to receive the cement boards)

Decided To Erect Two Wet Floor Pools Inside Kemaman BH !!!

 (One of the two wet floor system in Kemaman.  Have not apply with fresh bird shit yet)

The use of wet floor system was not new to me.

It was discovered many years ago during my routine BH inspection.

My observations during the many BHs visited which prompt me to use these wet floors are simple.

Those rooms that are wet seems to have more birds.

The dry rooms have lesser birds.

There was once story from a BH owner whose BH was flooded and his ground floor tenant complained about it.

When he rushed to repair the leakage he found something unusual.

The floor with those water were with many birds inside.

After repairing and drying out those water the birds went missing.

"Pak Harry I should have let the water stays as it was." his main regret.

There was one more incident in Sabah.

This BH owner converted a row of classroom into BH.

He donated a substantial amount of money to build a new building for a primary school and requested the board to allow him to take over the present classrooms that were easily flooded when it rain.

After the conversion operation he observed something strange.

Out of the many BHs he owned the one with flooded floors seems to perform the best.

This include the classroom BH.

Since these two incidents I tend to favor the deployment of wet floor system.

I thought about how to design them and the best is to use those ready cut blue canvas easily available at most hardware shop.

Get four pieces of 2"x 3" wood and form a frame about 10'X12'.

Open the canvas and staple the canvas onto the wood frame.

Make sure you staple the canvas properly and do not allow the canvas to leak.

Once that is done try to cover the pool created with fine sand about 1 inch thick.

Pour water onto the sand and allow the water level to be about 1 inch deep.

Now you can sprinkle some fresh bird shit on the water surface.

The fresh bird shit will soon create some powerful smell that is natural to those birds.

The pool of water with fresh bird shit inside provide not only water inside your BH but also fresh rotting bird shit from it.

A good way to help in getting more birds to stay inside but it also help to lure those young birds back once they have taken their first flight out of your BH.

It you need more information please call 017 7551318.

The Best Way To Lure More Birds Into Your BH !!!

This was how it looks like when we first arrived.

We transformed to something like this.

It looks like as if the BH went to the barber to have a hair cut.

My main reason was to reduce the roof extension to something that will reduce unnecessary blockages of the birds flying down from the hexagonal tweeter areas.

We also installed about five power tweeters on the wall of the monkey house plus change the hexagonal tweeter.

It used to be those giant type with four mini bazooka tweeters covering only four directions.

The new hexagonal is with five tweeters.

The perimeter wall area was painted with a special black paint with a kind of bird smell.

It help to make the entrance hole looks larger.

If you look carefully the window now is layered with nesting planks.

The wood will help our installation of tweeters on it.

Have a look at some pictures taken during the roof cutting operation.

It was a tight operation.  Yes the only hole available to sneak onto the roof is thru this small area found by by workers.

My boys did a very good job and they eventually complied to by design requirements.

Kemaman BH: Ready To Rock And Roll !!!

 (The new look of Kemaman BH main entrance area.)

At last after 3 weeks of afraid of height the Kemaman BH was back into operation.

One of the frightening aspect of revamping this BH was its ceiling height.

The two floors BH was designed with about 16-18 feet ceiling height.

If you climb up with those 12 steps ladder you will have that feeling that you will tumble down.

The BH owner provided us with those building racks and it help in some way but still when you stand up on the make shift floor you so feel your knees shivering due to the height.

Luckily there was no mishap and all installation using the movable rack went well.

The following installations were made using the rack:

1) The nesting corners for cluster tweeters installation.

2) The more than 300 fake nests.

3) The 400 pieces of internal sound tweeters.

4) The chocolate tweeters, about 6 sets.

5) The crossed leg tweeters.

6) Super Pheromone sprays onto all those fake nests.

7) 7 rolls of cables connecting all those tweeters to the data room.

8) 16 pieces of waste wood corners.

9) 36 pieces of aluminum fake nests.

Other activities on the two floors were:

1) Cutting of extended roof.

2) Removal of old hexagonal tweeter and replaced with a new unit.

3) Intallation of 7 pieces of power tweeters for last tengo sound system.

4) The main entrance window were installed with wooden frame.

5) The perimeter of the main entrance hole was painted with special black paint.

6) The installation of tweeters on the wooden frame.

7) Painted several walls inside the roving area with black colored paint.

8) Activated insect generating set inside the roving room.

9) Erected a properly sized door connecting the roving room with the LAL area.

10) Erected another door connecting the LAL area with the top floor nesting room.

11) Erected another partition with wide door to darken the top floor nesting room.

12) On the ground floor a total of three partitions were erected to minimize the amount of light coming from the roving area.

13) The ventilation holes were all installed with 2.5 feet long PVC pipes.

14) The ground floor was provided with two wet floor system.

15) In addition to the wet floor I added two chicken coop humidifiers each operated by an auto humidity sensors.

16) The external sound playing amplifier was changed to Teknik GT 106.

17) We recycled the amplifiers for the two floors internal sounds.

18) The external sound used for this BH were the "Super Vac" and "Marvelous Cloud".

19) The internal sound deployed was the Super BabyKing and BabyKing.

20) The top floors walls inside the VIP room was heat shield using those bubble sheet system.

21) The Last Tango sound system was deployed.

22) The LAL hole area were installed with about 4 power tweeters.

23) The owner wanted the ventilation holes to be covered from the outside with a special plastic covers and we did them.

24) Water piping system for humidifiers and wet floor system was installed inside.

A masterpiece and I know those birds will fell in love with it.

Give the BH about 5-6 months and I can guarantee that the nests number will doubled, I told the owner.

He surveyed the BH before allowing us to go home.

His comment was something like this:

"Pak Harry thank you for all the good job done.  I would like the same installation be done in another BH in town and maybe after that inside another BH in Ulu Besut."

I think he loved what he saw and from the look of what were carried out the BH now is perfect and more like a BH.

Yesterday he watched the birds returning home and was cock sure that the number entered was more than before our revamp operation.

The number of bird shit spots on both floors seems to be much higher than before.

I advised him to hold on and give the BH at least 3-6 months to prove to him that all the monies he allocated was a good investment.

He will get what he aimed for and his BH will be the best in the Kemaman.

What Have You Done To The Sound System ????

 (A strange and expensive method to cool a BH)

Yesterday's article was about this BH in Maran with strange bright light door inside a VIP room.

Now let me talk about something which make the previous owner wonder what really happened with the same BH he gave its custodian to his son.

I was on my way back to Kuala Lumpur from Kemaman.

On the way home I wanted to pass my visit report to this new BH owner.

He waited for some long hours before I arrived but I did reached the final destination with him waiting with a big smile.

The first thing I did was to apologize for being a bit late. It was further than what I initially thought.

The first thing we did was to order some food for dinner.

He started to share something and I think this new twist of event is something good for him.

"Pak Harry yesterday my Dad stop by the BH and he noticed something usual.  There were many birds above the main entrance hole and he asked me what I did with it.  Did you change the sound? What did you do to get those unusual number of birds flying above the BH? he asked."

This must have been due to those tweaking that I did during my visit to the BH.

The key point here is that if you know how to optimize your amplifiers I am sure you will get some unusual results.

Many people tends to take things for granted and never bother to learn how to optimize their amplifiers.

I believed this is something that every BH owner must learn.

I told him what I actually did.

First the setting of the three knobs (bass, mid and treble) and the second were those optimizer buttons.

The final thing that I remember carrying out was to increase the sound volume just a bit.

This was not the first time that gave a similar result.

I remembered getting the same: "Hey what have you done with my sound system.  You know after your last visit there are more birds flying around my BH".

I might have some talent but I am sure if you learn it properly you will get this simple talent.

If you want to know more please call me at 017 7551318.

A Strange Door That Uluminate A Nesting Room !!!

  (A look from the inside.  Just imagine the brightness inside your VIP room?)

One new owner of a three stories BH in Maran, Pahang wanted my expert opinion about his newly erected BH.

Actually his BH was a gift by his dad.

He promised to turn around the poorly performing BH and what he did was to contact me for some sort of expert opinion.

I remembered him when he attended one of my Swiftlet Farming seminar conducted about 1 .5 years ago.

The BH was on a small hill inside a palm oil plantation.

The moment I entered the data room I could not resist the temptation to tweak those knobs on the two amplifiers.

While doing that I told him that by looking at the setting made by the "consultant" I know for sure he is not a good one.

The way he set did very little to optimize the sound produced.

The next step was to enter the ground floor.

"Oh my god.  You have too many partitioning and it will not serve the purpose to lure your tenants." I commented to him.

There were more surprises when you walk up the two stairs to the main entrance area.

The BH was with two entrance holes.  One was the side entry and the second was the top entry.

The side entry was dedicated for the top most floor while the top entry was for the middle and ground floor.

The most unusual thing that I saw in this BH was the bright light coming from a door that was used to shut the passage that connect the top floor with the top entrance roving area.

The "consultant" deployed a light penetrable door that were designed for toilets for low cost housing.

The whole VIP room areas were bright like the morning light.

"How can he be so stupid to use the cheap door with light coming out of the wall?" I shook my head.

This are the type of so called consultant flooding the market.

This is also why more and more BHs failed to draw birds into them.

The next big mistake was the location of LAL between the middle floor and the ground floor.

The "consultant" opted to use the staircases as the LAL and for this particular BH they were in a Zig-Zag orientation.

I told the new owner firmly that if he wanted to populate the ground floor he need to cut the cement floor area when most birds will fly about it.

That will be the area just below the first staircase and not the current second staircase.

After viewing the many mistakes and some stupid things I wrote to him a 15 pages report that tells him how to correct all of them.

I hope he spend some time to evaluate the report.

If he wanted my help I will be happy to take a 2 hours drive up to get everything in proper order.

What a strange incident !!!

 (The same door from the outside facing the roving area)