Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Cleaning Your Tap-Watered Indoor Water Fountain

If you use de-ionized water from the first filling, you will look forward to a long, hassle-free relationship with your new indoor water fountain; if you’ve already been filling it with tap water, one good cleaning will restore your indoor water fountain to a like-new condition.

The way to clean spotty/streaky surfaces is to scrub them with a brush using a readily available mineral remover such as CLR®. The cleaning process involves removing your water fountain from its display spot into an area where there is an adequate supply of running water & drainage, so you can thoroughly rinse the chemical from the fountain after cleaning it. I urge the use of rubber gloves during this process to keep the chemical off your skin.

Prepare, also, by having plenty of towels on hand to dry the cleaned & rinsed areas quickly and thoroughly; otherwise minerals in the rinse water will replace some of the stuff you’ve just cleaned away. When you’ve gotten rid of the minerals and cleaning chemicals, you may have to reassemble the unit and then refill the fountain’s reservoir before turning it back on. NOTE: Do not run your fountain's pump ‘dry’- not good for it.

Many people use distilled instead of tap water for their fountains. Distilled water doesn’t eliminate all the junk and, eventually mineral build-up will still occur, but it is a vast improvement over tap water. You should be aware that neither filtered tap water nor bottled designer water will avoid mineral build up any more significantly than plain old tap water. If you have a pet that likes to use your water fountain as a refreshing oasis, it may be appreciate the better taste of filtered or designer water, but these waters in a fountain are not the best use of your resources.

My next blog will begin a review of the many benefits of your indoor water fountain.

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