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Icing down on Boston Common
By adamg on Sat, 11/11/2017 - 9:58pm
Maria M. reports:
Boston wins the wicked big icicle contest today.
See the entire fountain, and larger.
Copyright Maria M. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
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Oh good going
I think they've turned off all the bubblers; but apparently not the water fountains.
The city spent some ridiculous sum to restore this fountain
- which I think is beautiful. Way to go parks department for setting it up for more decades of malfunction.
The fountains in my neighborhood have been off for a month. What's the deal??
What in God's holy name are
What in God's holy name are you blathering about?
Settle down
He's saying the parks department should have shut the fountain off earlier because otherwise the water in the pipes could freeze and break the pipes.
Fountains vs. drinking fountains aka "bubblers"
A fountain that runs all the time is actually at much less risk of breaking during a hard frost than a drinking fountain is, because the water is running continuously. Heat radiates out of the metal of the fountain into the cold air, but that heat is continually replenished by the c. 50F water that's running through the pipes.
In a drinking fountain, the water only runs when people are actively using it, and during the cold nighttime hours it's likely that nobody uses it at all. The heat that it radiates into the air is not replenished, and eventually the water in it freezes and cracks the plumbing.
Friends of the Public Garden
paid for it, I'm pretty sure, not the City. The FOPG do most of the work in the Common and Garden these days, the city doesn't fund parks in a way that includes replacing trees, much less fixing fountains.