Fountain refurbishment

Fountain refurbishment is a good idea but not as easy as you may think. Refurbishing a fountain is not the same as  restoring a fountain. Restoring a fountain is changing any worn or broken parts and fixing any leaks etc and making it work as it used to.

Refurbishing a fountain is totally different, Let us take the sketch below as an example

The facts

Each circle represents a solid concrete pillar

The centre pillar 2m high 2m in diameter

Each side pillar is 1m high and 75cm in diameter

The pool is 7m long and 3m wide

Each pillar has  a small "well" to allow water to reduce velocity and to gently flow down the sides.

There is no lighting

The requirement

To bring this old disused fountain back to life, more spectacular, have water running up the sides, add colour changing lights, be green have it all run by solar energy

Budget  £5,000

The problems

First of all, all solar operated pumps are expensive and being solar require a location for the solar panels. The solar panels could be mounted a few metres away high up on a pole, but the pole will cost a few hundred pounds + installation.

Domestic solar pumps are just not suitable as they are not powerful enough.

Commercially available solar pumps (as used in hot countries to provide water from wells)  require very large solar cells, which will require more poles, and being as this is the UK, where will you actually get bright sunshine for more than "10 minutes" And how will it work the cells work when it rains, cloudy, dull, snowing, leaves on the line, the wrong type of snow.

The fountain was designed with small wells at the top of each pillar, this means there is no access to the feed pipe. It is also soon determined that the feed pipe is 15mm in diameter. This is too small for any suitable nozzle, and as mentioned there is no access to the old pipe which is starting to corrode.

It could be argued that a smaller nozzle be fitted, (Secured by resin) but this will not give the desired effect.

Custom made spray rings around the two smaller pillars could be considered, but not the larger pillar as the width of the pool does not allow for a big enough custom built spray ring to fit.

The cost of the two smaller custom built spray rings is also over the budget

Lighting could be added around the base, but there are no conduit outlets  to attach a junction box to to feed the lights, also ideally to light the jets the lights should be on the top in order to light the water, but as the pillars are solid this is also not an option, not to mention as its solar there are no available solar lights that are bright enough, the solar lights we can supply are for domestic use only. (Yes, they are not bright enough for a big feature)

In summary

This fountain was designed to run with a gentle water flow over the pillars and no lights, that is all it can ever do.

The budget is also too small to allow for anything that is realistic.

If the pillars could be removed and new pipe work installed we can almost start again, but to do this will cost several £K at least, which again is over budget

It will be a shame but the only thing to do is demolish the fountain and build a new fountain to the new requirements, but this is also over the budget

When a property is refurbished, often walls are knocked down, moved and or rebuilt, it is the same with a fountain, the basic structure can stay (The pool) but everything else has to go.

That is why you occasionally see old fountains empty and in bad state of repair, because you can not change them from what they were to something more up to date without spending a lot of money.

Sometimes people have to shelve projects because of the cost, we often get asked "Can you not do it cheaper?" If we could "do it cheaper"  we would, but as you see, there is more to a fountain than you first see.

Footnote

The fountain in the diagram does not actually exist, and any similarity to this or any other fountain is purely co-incidental