Posted on 07/10/2006 11:05:26 PM PDT by Panerai
NORTH MANKATO, Minn. --Here, the bubbles runneth over. A park fountain in this southern Minnesota town has been hit by suds-dumping pranksters at least 10 times in the past few months. And now, city officials are in a lather.
"Baby-sitting a fountain just isn't a good use of our time," said police Capt. Wayne Hoffman.
Every time the fountain is "soaped" -- as the police and parks workers call it -- several clean up and repair jobs must get done. The fountain has to be turned off and drained. Then the inside of it and the water-circulating lines must be rinsed out. It's then refilled with hundreds of gallons of water and the pH levels are tested and rebalanced. The process -- which sometimes has to be repeated -- takes about one and a half hours. Leaving a sudsy fountain running isn't an option since soap can damage the pump.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Install a camera and catch the vandals in the act.
Have they tried dumping in some liquid fabric softener. A little of that cuts a lot of suds in a hurry.
In Middle Age on festive occasions city fountains used to flow with wine [a cheap variety. VERY cheap]. Did they call for cleaners and repairmen then?
Gravity powered I guess. Dump in wine up stream.
One of my favorite college memories was walking across campus at 3 am and finding 2 young women skinny-dipping in the fountain.
Electric pumps were better quality in those days.
Most laundry soaps are not high sudsing at high dilutions. I'm thinking something more along the lines of Joy or Palmolive.
So why don't the dummies add a suds suppressor to the water?
Or if they added a bottle of white vinegar it would cut those suds in a jiffy.
That prank was played every every year for years back in the 70's and early 80's here at our local university - IUP (Indiana University of Pennsylvania), which has two fountains. The university finally turned them off for many, many years. Within the last few years they finally turned them on again. I guess they figured the generation of "soap-sudsers" had finally passed from memory and no one would think to do it again!
Give it time.
Oh man, I spent one semester going to IUP back in the early 90's.
Fountain Square in downtown Cincinatti has often been hit with this type of...'vandalism.'
I graduated in 1993 ("non-traditional student") We were probably there at the same time. :-) IUP is a liberal hell-hole. They had a prof who had his name legally changed to "Talks to Trees". He just took a job at some university in New Jersey. The got rid of the Indian as their mascot (now it's a bear) and are talking about changing the name of the sports teams from "Indians" to who-knows-what.
I live five miles away from IUP.
I don't go there if I can help it.
I don't donate my money to the university.
I took my name off the alumni association e-mail list.
We used to suds the giant air conditioner cooling tanks when I was in high school. It was a tradition. The football field looked like a blizzard had hit from all the suds.
Heh! Now THAT's creative!
I prefer Ty-D-Bol. It turns the water blue.
But ...
What about the little guy in the boat?
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