So at the Engineering Bash I tried to turn on the fountain. It flooded in about 60 seconds. I jumped to a hasty conclusion that the summer maintenance folks had failed to clean the filters properly, and accused them of such, publicly. Only to have one of those said summer maintenance folks inform me, in person, that he was in fact on cleaning duty this summer and can vouch for it having been done. I was left looking like a jerk, grasping at straws for other explanations, and having to walk away embarrassed.

Today, Tim and I took a look “under the hood” of the fountain to see if we could figure out what, after the assurance of clean filters, could possibly be causing the flooding problem. Here is what we found:

Oh wait: That looks an awful lot like completely clogged filters, leading directly to the flooding we experienced.

15 minutes with a shop vac later, the problem was resolved and the fountain runs fine. So I looked like a jerk for naught, and apparently the maintenance guy and myself have a different perspective on the precise definition of “frequently cleaned.”