The Drinking Fountain Button is Tragically Misunderstood

Buttons feel magical. You press Hereand invisible connections cause something to happen elsewhere. But it is “magical”. not This is how I would describe most public drinking fountains.

Who among us hasn’t gone to a drinking fountain expecting a gushing stream of life-giving water, only to be met with the crushing disappointment of a meager trickle after pressing the button?

But I’m starting to think it’s not the drinking button’s fault; They are actually some of the most elegant buttons available. They are one of the few remaining buttons where your pressure directly and mechanically controls the outcome. They are over a hundred years old. And all the action takes place just an inch away from the button itself.

As your thumb pushes the metal disc inward, you press a button at the same time underneath the button that opens a spout Inside the outlet. There is a seal inside that blocks the flow of water when the button sticks out and releases it when you press down. Pushing down moves the seal, which normally covers a tiny stream of water inside the mechanism, allowing the water to pass through. Then it can move freely, filling the inside of the faucet and shooting out the fountain at a rate of about 0.4 gallons per minute.

Sounds easy, right? The brilliant thing about the drinking fountain button is that it can be repaired in a modular manner. The entire mechanism is part of a self-contained cartridge that can be easily removed and replaced.

A quick patent search shows that the cartridge idea dates back to at least the late 1950s, and drinking fountain manufacturers have almost standardized it today. “Three of our four competitors use the same cartridge,” says Bill Epker, a 45-year veteran of Haws Corporation, a company that began developing and patenting drinking fountain technology in 1906. Regardless of whether it is a push button, a push button, almost all of them have the same cartridge in them, says Epker.

Drinking fountains didn’t always have push buttons. Haws’ original 1906 design, like this earlier Hyde Fountain Company design from 1897, involved squeezing a set of pincer-like handles. And many of the first drinking fountains had no controls at all – in Portland, Oregon, there are still over a hundred “bubblers” who dispense water all by themselves for 18 hours a day.

A 1912 review of 15 different types of “plumbing wells” showed not a single button, only levers, knobs, an optional foot pedal, and always-running types. A 1911 patent application suggests that the buttons were expensive: “The objection to pressing valves has hitherto been their cost.”

But drinking fountain giant Halsey Taylor at least imagined a push button in his very first patent in 1912. And by 1928, they definitely seem to have caught on: a patent from that year states that drinking fountains were “usually equipped with push buttons.” to open your valves – just without the cartridge part.

Why the switch from levers to buttons? Haws, which actually only switched over in 1984, says maintenance has become much easier with the introduction of cartridge systems. Modern models even have special filters to keep their interiors from clogging up so quickly, and a screwdriver hole that allows anyone with a small screwdriver to adjust the height of the jet – changing the maximum distance the seal is from the internal Water connection moved away.

They’re also harder to destroy because they don’t have a breakaway lever and have a silver (or copper) disc cover that simply twists into place when you try to turn it. However, they are still easy to repair: Haws patented a version in 2006 that allows a repair technician to easily remove the button and access the cartridge with a single special key.

But ironically it is a Shortage even the basic maintenance that turns bubblers into dribblers, Josh Linn, technical product manager at Haws, tells me. Many simply require cleaning the screen or adjusting the elevation screw, he says. One of the company owners always carried a small screwdriver with him wherever he went to fix trickling fountains. If you want to try it yourself, Epker says a 1/8-inch flathead screwdriver is the largest that will fit.

Not that that’s necessary in the US, where having a crappy experience at a public drinking fountain is technically against the law! The Americans with Disabilities Act requires them to fire a jet of water at least four inches high. Additionally, controls “shall not require firm grasping, pinching, or twisting of the wrist,” and a fountain cannot require more than five pounds of force from one hand to operate.

So before you blame that button, maybe tell your local parks department that it needs fixing?

Purely physical drinking fountain knobs may not last forever. Some indoor chilled water fountains already use microswitches and solenoids to dispense their product, and many water bottle fillers use hands-free sensors instead of buttons. Many people are now also turning to packaged bottled water, although most bottled water in the US is re-filtered tap water and is not necessarily cleaner.

But Haws says that at least customers appear to have cooled off when it comes to buying hands-free sensors for their device normal Drinking fountains now that the Covid-19 pandemic has subsided. “I would say people are turning to mechanical operation more and more,” says marketing manager Mike Wilhelm. “There are fewer things to go wrong, it’s easier to maintain it over time.”

At the moment the button is simply more reliable.