The Water Fountain Evolves

The basic drinking fountain�requiring you to bend over, press a button and slurp�was a steady seller for decades. Then, nearly 10 years ago, executives of Elkay Manufacturing Co. started noticing what they call "the airport dance."

More people were toting plastic water bottles. Rather than drinking from the fountain, they wanted to refill those jugs. It wasn't working.

Saverio Truglia for The Wall Street Journal

Elkay's Rod Magnuson at a DePaul water fountain with two students.

The dance was a sort of shuffle done by travelers trying to tilt bottles at the proper angle for refilling without splashing water on their shoes.

Elkay, a family-owned maker of plumbing equipment based in Oak Brook, Ill., began rethinking the water fountain. In recent years, Elkay and rivals, including Haws Corp. and Oasis International, have introduced new types of fountains designed to refill bottles.

"We were really changing what a water cooler was," says Rod Magnuson, a product director at Elkay.

Water is more popular as Americans reduce consumption of high-calorie soft drinks. Tap and bottled water accounted for around 30% of the typical American's liquid intake last year, up from 16% two decades before, according to Beverage Marketing Corp., a consulting firm. Nearly half of that water came from taps, including drinking fountains.

But Americans are picky. Many consider fountains unsanitary. Though Elkay added antimicrobial agents to the mouth guards, fear of germs lingered.

Fountains also could be dangerous. In some schools, kids leaning down for a drink were shoved by bullies and ended up with broken teeth. Elkay introduced Flexi-Guard mouth guards made of plastic instead of steel, but that didn't entirely allay safety concerns. In focus groups, some women said bending over a fountain made them feel vulnerable, or the pose was unflattering.

Though Elkay knew fountains had to change, progress was slow. For one thing, the housing market was booming in 2004 and 2005, so the company was focused on developing new types of kitchen sinks.

There were also technical hurdles. Elkay executives thought filling a 16-ounce bottle should take less than 10 seconds to prevent boredom and distraction. According to an early participant in the project, an Elkay engineer said that was impossible, given the need to filter and chill the water.

Another engineer, Franco Savoni, who joined Elkay from an auto-parts company, was assigned to speed up the flow. Mr. Savoni and others devised a way to push the water through the filter, a block of carbon encased in plastic, more swiftly.

The result was a machine that fills 16 ounces in about five seconds if the water is at room temperature, or about seven seconds if it has to meander through refrigeration pipes on the way out. The traditional fountains needed at least 20 seconds.

To address germ fears, Elkay decided to let people use its new fountain, dubbed the EZH20, without touching it. When you set a bottle down under the spigot, an infrared sensor automatically turns on the flow. The user needs to pull the bottle away in time to avoid an overflow. That action stops the flow. If a daydreamer fails to pull the bottle away, the water automatically switches off after 20 seconds.

Elkay

Elkay's EZH2O bottle-filling station

The nozzle is recessed behind a plastic protector to avoid contact with the bottle and a possible spreading of germs. The water comes out in what Elkay calls a "laminar" flow. That means it isn't aerated. (Kitchen and bathroom faucets typically inject air into the water flow to make the stream look fuller.) A laminar flow makes the water less likely to splash or pick up airborne bacteria, Mr. Magnuson says.

When the product was introduced about three years ago, Elkay noted that it baffled some people. So graphics were added to show how to use it.

One of the most inspired features is a digital counter, showing how many bottles have been filled. "I thought that was a dumb idea," says Jack Krecek, who spearheaded the EZH2O project before leaving Elkay to run another company. But the counter ended up helping "make this thing go viral," he says. College students liked showing how green they were by tracking how many plastic bottles had been kept out of landfills. Some held intra-campus competitions to see who could reuse the most bottles.

Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., began buying Elkay fountains after students campaigned against what they saw as plastic-bottle waste. The college has installed 49 of the devices and says more than 1.4 million plastic bottles have been refilled by them over the past two years. Incoming freshmen receive a free stainless-steel water bottle. David Rabold, capital projects manager at Muhlenberg, says sales of bottled water on campus have fallen 90% since EZH2O fountains were installed.

Elkay won't disclose sales of the new fountains�whose suggested retail prices range from about $700 to $2,075, depending on the model�but says they have been installed in hundreds of colleges and universities, as well as at least 15 airports, including Chicago's O'Hare and New York's LaGuardia.

As for old-style fountains, they are still around, including one near the desk of Elkay's receptionist, Sandy Huscher. She uses it to wash her apples.

Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com