Some years back I was asked to work on a copper fountain made by Eric Orr. Now deceased, his work seems to be continuing at http://wstudio.com/studio.html. Here is an obit: http://articles.latimes.com/1998/nov/18/news/mn-44172
This work is very minimal, stands about 9 feet tall and is essentially a square column with a washboard pattern. Water is pumped to the top and its fall down the washboard creates fascinating wave patterns that seem to travel downwards at maybe 25% the normal acceleration of gravity. We need to figure out some video of this effect, it is cool but now fairly common. This is an early work by Orr and seeing it from that context, I think it is fairly significant. It also has a myriad of engineering problems.
The work is in a pristine, open and minimal living room in north Atlanta. The owners of the work, Mark and Jane commissioned a sculpture (http://www.zacharycoffin.com/pendulum/index.php) and during that discussion, they asked if I was interested in trying to solve two problems with the Eric Orr: 1) The pump was contained in the base of the work which made for a very small reservoir-- especially for a work which is essentially an evaporative column and 2) this created a resonant chamber that made the pump very loud making it impossible to run the sculpture for long before the buzz became too irritating and it was switched off.
We removed the piece and took it to my studio for examination. We concluded that the best solution was to build a white melamine pedestal, plumb the work with a set of bulkhead fittings and pipe the water into a stainless steel reservoir contained in the pedestal. This increased the amount of water that could be stored and raised the work about a foot. We insulated the pump and immersed it in the new reservoir.
With the new reservoir, it was now possible for the work to over flow if there was a blockage in the drain. So we placed a float switch to kill the pump if the level got too high in the base of the sculpture.
We placed a float switch in the reservoir to protect the pump from burning up if the water got too low.
We also hacked a "flood alert" water detector to warn of high water in the reservoir. I cut the speaker out and wired in a red led. This allowed Mark to fill the sculpture until the light came on.
I'm the Mark of "Mark and Jane". Zach's right: it did work way better. I was able to fill it about every other day with 2 gallosn of tap water (the original instructions were for distilled, but that wasn't functional). The overflow light told me when it was full. When I forgot and the water level dropped too low, the pump would shut itself off. There was still a small hum, but not enough to be annoying. One interesting problem is that the entire column has to be "wetted" for the water to distribute apporpriately. I now have an "Eric Orr" mop that I use for this. It takes just a couple of minutes once the fountain is on. I do mostly leave it on, and turn off the lights at night. The reengineering was great: until we learned what happens when water sits for months. More to come.
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