The Middle Path Fountain
Inspired by Geneva
The vision at Geneva.
The Jet d'Eau fountain on the Geneva Lake is one of the tallest fountains in the world. Originally built in 1886 to control and release the excess pressure of a hydraulic plant at La Coulouvrenière, it became accepted as a symbol of the city and was amplified and relocated to the center of the Lake where it remains to this day.
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Something missing.
Faced with this lovely aquatic environment, we felt there was something missing - namely a fountain which had always been “in the wings” of our vision.
There was also something that definitely wasn't missing - a weed we think is Elodea which we presume escaped from an aquarium somewhere in the vicinity and has completely filled the dam with a very tasty (much like lettuce) greenery.
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Removing the weed.
We dried some once and ended up with a powder which seemed indistinguishable from Spirulina - another possible herbal business?
It is totally impossible to swim through the stuff and so we have to annually clear a section of the water to swim in - here's how it's done!
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The Fountain - first attempt
Having cleared the space around the pontoon we set about creating our version of the Jet d'Eau, economies ruled out a fixed installation so - after much thought - a design resulted for a floating fountain.
Designed to be weighed down to ensure a vertical jet and the feeder pipe to be out of the way of swimmers.
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The Fountain head - detail
Fortuitously standard 1" rural pipe fits snugly inside a 10" float we found at a marine chandler's. The float fitted snugly inside a stainless steel mixing bowl which gave it a much more polished appearance.
The addition of a standard 12mm barbed fitting completed the fountain.
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And here's what it looked like in action from the shore - sort of a bit like the original Jet d'Eau but unlikely to be mistaken for it.
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In action.
Here's what it looked like in action - closeup.
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Management inspection.
Management came to inspect the results and declared it "acceptable but disappointing".
Revisions were needed but the question was - what form should they take.
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Weed infestation.
It was around this time that we discovered that our weed removal had not been as thorough at depth as we have hoped.
As the water pressure varied (due to the pump cutting in and out) the fountain would sink and rise in the water - which produced a lovely variation in the jet of water.
It also meant that the fountain itself started to dredge weed from the water and soon came to look like a junior wet Christams Tree wannabe. Not the image we were after!
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Pro brass nozzle.
Thanks to eBay the hard to find brass fountain nozzles were readily available in India and would be soon in our hands - here's the first one we tried.
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Pro brass nozzle in action
And here's what it looked like - and it looks a lot better in the photo than it did in reality!
Management's verdict this time was "disappointing and UNacceptable".
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Nearing completion Fountain
We refitted the barbed jet and added a couple of milk cartons (temporary, of course) to prevent the jet sinking too far underwater - here's what it looks like:
Final state of the Fountain
We replaced the milk cartons with fishing floats, added some chain - here's what it looks like:
Management's verdict this time was "Wow! and ultra-acceptable".
At last - we had added the WOW! factor to our waterfront wallow.
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And here's the movie version:
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