How it works
This is the kind of water fountain fixed to the wall in schools and offices: an electric water cooler with a bottle filler. The names are the ones makers print in their parts lists.
Read the full guide
What you see and touch
Press the push bar and a stream of water arcs out of the bubbler. What you do not drink lands in the basin and runs out through the drain. The bottle filler above fills a bottle instead. Everything else is hidden in the cabinet under the basin.
Inside the cabinet
Water from the building passes through the filter, then the evaporator, which chills it. The regulator keeps the stream at one height. The compressor, the condenser and its fan are the cooling system, as in a refrigerator. Water from the drain falls down the waste line and through the trap.
- In parts of Wisconsin and New England, people call the whole fountain a bubbler.
Questions and answers
What are the parts of a water fountain called?
Outside: the bubbler, the basin with its drain, the push bar and the cabinet, often with a bottle filler above. Inside the cabinet: a filter, a regulator, the waste line and trap, and a cooling system made of compressor, condenser, fan and evaporator.
What is the spout on a water fountain called?
A bubbler. It is the small outlet at the edge of the basin that sends the water up in an arc. On many fountains a small guard sits over it so that mouths do not touch the opening.
How does a water fountain make the water cold?
The same way a refrigerator does. A compressor pumps refrigerant round a sealed loop. The evaporator takes heat out of the drinking water, and the condenser, with a fan blowing over it, gives that heat off to the room.
Where does the water go after it hits the basin?
Down the drain in the basin, into the waste line and through a trap, a bend in the pipe, before it enters the building's drain in the wall. None of it goes back to the bubbler.