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Fountain anatomy Fountain anatomy, must be simple You know what an ordinary "domestic" fountain anatomy looks like since you have probably made one. But have you ever stopped and wondered how a commercial fountain works? We thought you may like an incite as to how it is done. Unlike a domestic water feature there are only basically two choices of construction material. Concrete or fibre glass since if a liner was used it could be easily damaged by anyone.
Pictures are NOT to scale As you can see the basic design is very similar except that the commercial fountain is obviously made from concrete and also has the following differences. It has an inbuilt conduit for the electrical supply and also an overflow / drain pipe. This is important because if the fountain should get too full with rain it prevents it from overflowing. Also this particular example is only a small fountain and obviously has no lights.
Picture taken aprox 2001 The picture of the above is what most people would consider to be a commercial fountain (It can be seen in London W2 not far from Marble Arch.) If you were to look at the fountain you will see no pumps or pipe work since it is buried in the concrete. This fountain has a separate "pump chamber" which in this case is under the fountain It consists of a very large room (it just happens to be very large.) Which consists of control gear* and all the pumps and pipework. For reasons unknown to me the fountain shown above has been drained and "made over" below is a picture of what it now looks like
Picture taken aprox 2004 * The control gear is basically all the electrical components the pumps need to operate and timers to start and stop the fountains and water replenishment facilities which can be anything from a "float valve" to more sophisticated electronic fill valves. Also they have the facility for "dosing" the water, that is where chemicals are added to prevent algae growing which would turn the water green. So next time you see a commercial fountain spare a thought for all the "workings" that you can not see. want to build your own fountain?
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