General Chat

Can anyone tell me how in the days before electricity, fountains were made to work in all the public places that had them? It has puzzled me for a long time.

Generally speaking, a water source that was higher up than the fountain was used - simple physics and gravity.
In more complex cases, each fountain would then feed another, lower down.

Fountains before Electricity were basically gravity fed from a source of water higher than the fountain.

Someone more technical than me :-S
can explain how that works :-D

Sorry Errol you posted whilst I was still typing :-D

A wonderful example of fountains is at the Alhambra ,Granada in Spain,
Beautiful architecture and fountains from a bygone age...the Moors.
Sure you can google for it!

aha Lolly - shows neither of us are making it up lol

Water, as a liquid. will always try to find its own level. So if you have a source that is 100ft up and channel or pipe it to a lower height, it will increase in pressure (and thus speed) as it tries to find its equilibrium. If you also make the pipe narrower and narrower, that pressure will increase. The result being that it will exit the fountain at the lower level at increased pressure giving the spectacular displays that we often see.
As an experiment, if you take a funnel and attach a tube to it, hold the tube at a lower level and pour water into the funnel you will see the effect. Now pinch the tube and you will see the "spout" increase in ferocity.

I believe that in California, for example the Casa Grande,(hearst castle)
the Hearst mansion, had a water storage facility on an opposite mountain, and to hide it, full grown trees were transported up, and planted into holes blasted by dynamite,

a wind driven pump might be used to pump water into a tank(lake) such as this, or in another case steam driven pumps would suffice.

in the london docks, hundreds of of water driven cranes were serviced by a special hydraulic system....

Errol...Which is why I get wet feet when distracted emptying my terrapin tank into buckets...lol :-D

Lolly where do the terrapins go?

Anywhere they want to... the little blighters move surprisingly fast

On sunny days into a tank in the garden (not much chance lately...and that gets pretty green after a while) so needs emptying quite often :-D

Thanks all, simple when you know how, but some of those fountains are magnificent. :-)

The water pressure at Versailles was not sufficient for all the fountains King Louis wanted, so the gardeners used to run ahead of him when he walked in the gardens, turning the next fountain on, with someone turning off the ones he had already passed!