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The drinking fountain button

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Re: The drinking fountain button

#81

Post by bombcar »

alistairSH wrote: post #66
tichiian wrote: post #2

I wish Europe had any drinking fountains. Even extremely-high-traffic public areas such as airports and train stations have but a few or (usually) none.

What countries do have them? In the US, they seem to exist in offices and schools. Airports tend to have them, and often with a bottle filler on the side, which is great since we can't carry water through security. But, just walking down the street, truly public water? Is that a thing anywhere in the US, or elsewhere?

As others have mentioned, they're very common (in the US) in parks and libraries, but there are also some that are "just there" on the side of the street as part of the sidewalk or path (sure, often near a park but not always).

More and more the newer ones are also "dog watering stations" which is basically a foot-operated drinking fountain with a slow-drain bowl (or just a concrete bowl with no drain).

Even parks that don't have restrooms will often have a fountain.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#82

Post by dredmorbius »

SoftTalker wrote: post #63
chrsw wrote: post #14

Where I'm from those fountains rarely even worked.

When I lived in Chicago the public water fountains just ran all the time. There was no button. The city is right on Lake Michigan so they have an abundant supply of fresh water. As I understand it, for many years they did not even meter water for residential service, you just paid a flat fee every month.

Unmetered water service is (or was) common in, of all places, California's Central Valley, including the cities of Sacramento, Bakersfield, Modesto, Merced, and Lodi, legacy of the state's rather arcane (and highly nonscientific and environmentally hostile) Spanish-based water rights laws. Unsurprisingly, when meters were installed, even where billing wasn't based on usage, massive wastage through broken infrastructure was rapidly discovered, an interesting example of "what isn't measured cannot be managed".

See: https://www.kqed.org/science/15191/california-communities-th...> and https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article201568164.html>

Other regions without use-metered water include parts of the UK, and Asia where the concept is called "non-revenue water (NRW)":

UK: https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/households/your-water-bill/unmetere...>

Asia: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jscejer/76/7/76_III_277...> (PDF).

NRW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-revenue_water>

Re: The drinking fountain button

#83

Post by bombcar »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #64
IncreasePosts wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In morocco, we have restaurants with sinks near the front, exactly like a sink you might find in a bathroom in a house, and next to that sink is a copper cup attached by a chain to the wall. And people are free to come in and drink from that. I always wondered why the humble fountain wasn't more popular

Maybe the water waste in fountains feels worse in drought-prone regions? Even if the amount is comparably tiny, watching a precious resource just vanish down the drain might be hard to stomach? I'm basing this on nothing, by the way, but it feels like a fun hypothesis.

I've seen drinking fountains in the desert; it may be more that they just don't have a ready supply of them in Morocco, but sinks abound.

Often the fountain will just drain into the dirt nearby, which means it is often the only green area when it's a desert fountain.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#84

Post by bombcar »

vwelling wrote: post #53
piskov wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the empty Nutella jars were washed, kept and used as glasses for drinking - because buying new glasses was hard or expensive. You do understand that sand is one of the most common things on earth (hence the glass is dirt-cheap). Just as an example of those mentioned faceted glasses: their price was 7 or 14 copecks (good thing every one of them had the price stamped on the bottom). It’s less than the price of bread.…

Well actually... We're doing a pretty good job of making it a lot less common: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/problem-our-dwin... There's even such a thing as Sand Theft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_theft

Nice beach sand and glass-making sand are quite different; glass-making sand doesn't have to be nice and smooth.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#85

Post by bombcar »

kube-system wrote: post #75
piskov wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not fountains but glorified watercoolers with sparkling water and, sometimes, lemonade. Most of the time they were not free although very cheap: 1 copeck. These survived up to the 1995, several years after the fall. And yes, most glasses have never been stolen. Shared glasses were quite safe because every machine had special button to clean the glass with pressurized technical water (several calibrated jets…

> Meat was wrapped in paper. Milk, butter and sour cream were poured into whatever container buyer had provided. These were both common in mid-century US too. These practices were slowly discontinued because other packaging was cheaper and more sanitary, especially as foods were packaged further away from the end consumer. And when buying meat fresh at a butcher in the US, it's still fairly common to get it wrapped i…

You can still find places where you can buy stuff "tare" with your own container, but you might have to explain to the clerk what you're wanting to do.

(Basically if using your own container, you put it on the scale, hit "tare" which zeros the scale with the container and then you fill it up. Most bulk sales are via standard plastic containers the store has which are already in the machine's database.)

Re: The drinking fountain button

#86

Post by bombcar »

tokai wrote: post #25
piskov wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not fountains but glorified watercoolers with sparkling water and, sometimes, lemonade. Most of the time they were not free although very cheap: 1 copeck. These survived up to the 1995, several years after the fall. And yes, most glasses have never been stolen. Shared glasses were quite safe because every machine had special button to clean the glass with pressurized technical water (several calibrated jets…

"The former Soviet Union was the world's second largest producer of harmful emissions." Some paradise. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0959378094...

Who was the largest? Heh - they try to justify it via GNP.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#87

Post by bombcar »

numpad0 wrote: post #49
piskov wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not fountains but glorified watercoolers with sparkling water and, sometimes, lemonade. Most of the time they were not free although very cheap: 1 copeck. These survived up to the 1995, several years after the fall. And yes, most glasses have never been stolen. Shared glasses were quite safe because every machine had special button to clean the glass with pressurized technical water (several calibrated jets…

> Meat was wrapped in paper. Milk, butter and sour cream were poured into whatever container This type of arguments are still as annoying as the first time I've heard it. Reusable containers just don't satisfy modern day safety standards. If they could get away without paying for packaging they will happily do so. They can't because chances of poisoning followed by lawsuits becomes real at scale, causes including not…

Reusable containers are used at almost ever restaurant in the world that serves on plates.

Reusable containers are currently not cheaper and so they're not used - but the fact that they're not used for non-food items is pretty indicative that it's a cost thing, not a safety thing.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#88

Post by toast0 »

tichiian wrote: post #18
hobs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eco/Green paradise? Plastic isn't the only poison, the USSR was happy to create plenty of industrial poison - Lake Karachay is a great example. "The former Soviet Union was the world's second largest producer of harmful emissions. Total emissions in the USSR in 1988 were about 79% of the US total. Considering that the Soviet GNP was only some 54% of that of the USA, this means that the Soviet Union generated 1.5 time…

And before someone says Lake Karachay is an extreme example because of the nuclear arms race and secrecy: Take the vanishing Aral Sea, the oil and gas leaks, or the "there is no thermostat, just a radiator on 100% and an open window" heating system.

Fresh air and required heat isn't a bad combination. New York City radiator design was very similar after the 1918 flu.

Modern construction with heavy insulation certainly reduces energy use, but at the cost of air quality. Even more modern construction includes air exchangers, but there's a lot of buildings with insufficient airflow.

Re: The drinking fountain button

#89

Post by themaninthedark »

ajuc wrote: post #39
piskov wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not fountains but glorified watercoolers with sparkling water and, sometimes, lemonade. Most of the time they were not free although very cheap: 1 copeck. These survived up to the 1995, several years after the fall. And yes, most glasses have never been stolen. Shared glasses were quite safe because every machine had special button to clean the glass with pressurized technical water (several calibrated jets…

> USSR has been eco/green paradise USSR was poor as fuck therefore is saved money on packaging whenever it could. It was occasionally ecologically benefitial as well, but to go from that to "eco/green paradise" is absurd. USSR was polluting like crazy, significanly more than more developed economies. It treated its citizens as replacable cogs, to the point that after Chernobyl catastrophe it was Sweden not USSR that…

Not to mention the whales.... https://fee.org/articles/why-the-soviets-slaughtered-180-000...
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