Architectural Fountain Design & Manufacturing
Boston, MA
Brewer Fountain, a 22-foot-tall sculpture cast in bronze, has stood as the focal point of Boston Common since 1868, when it was donated to the city by local businessman Gardner Brewer. A replica of an award-winning French fountain, the 140-year-old feature was in need of restoration.
The water flowing over the two-tiered bowls of the historic fountain was being wasted, rather than circulated and reused. Prior to our 2009 fountain renovation, the feature had wasted four billion gallons of water. As with most fountain restoration projects, Delta Fountains had to create custom solutions that would remain compatible with the fountain’s existing plumbing ports and structure, yet achieve up-to-date efficiency and standards of operation.
Delta Fountains designed a reservoir and circulating system, along with sanitizing equipment to maintain water purity. Custom details for the structural basin and all the plumbing and electrical fittings were created for the circulating system, to overcome the challenges of the outdated existing conditions. The custom fittings were mandatory to allow for a fully functional and operational system with the needed capabilities: draining the system, managing overflow in conditions of rain, extracting floating debris that enters with an automatic surface skimmer, filling the basin with water make-up automatically, cutting off the pumps in low-water and unsafe operating conditions, and constant monitoring with sensors to assist in sustaining the feature’s operation.
A compact, six-port multi valve with a printed circuit board based (PCB) actuator was used to filter the debris; it included an on-board pressure differential function that monitored the environment and initiated an automatic backwash of the filter at the precise time. To house the equipment out of sight in a busy plaza, Delta Fountains used a low-profile vault with a load bearing tile set hatch.
