The wiki page for key:fountain describes several different kinds of fountains whereat some of these tags describe the form and others the function which is not really consistent imo. Anyhow I noted that there is no tag for a fountain type very common in many European countries which is the running fountain or permanent flow fountain. There is a german wikipedia page for this type of fountain called “Laufbrunnen” but no english one so I believe this fountain type is not very common in english speaking countries. For more details and sample pics see the topic linked below.
The primary characteristic of these fountains is the permanent flow of fresh water, historically from a natural source like a spring or creek. In some areas every village has at least one of those which was used for the supply of drinking water to the inhabitants for hundreds of years. Most of them are historic objects but in some places new ones have been installed in the past decades. Although installed as drinking water supply many of them do not provide drinking water any longer due to old pipe material or polluted water.
I want to give these fountains a dedicated tag. According to TagInfo there is fountain=running (96 uses) which would fit imo.
I did not find a translation for “Laufbrunnen” in most dictionaries, only LEO provided “running well” or “discharging well” or “flowing well” as options, but looking into the definiton of “well” I’d say this does not really fit these object which are clearly fountains imo.
Does amenity=fountain + fountain=running make sense for native english speakers or would another value fit better?
This seems almost more like a spring to me than a fountain. I understand it’s not a natural feature, so I would be tempted to suggest something like a man_made=spring.
Out of curiosity, what happens to those in winter in places where temperatures fall to -10 or so?
No, it is not a spring. The spring usually is at another place any distance away and connected by a pipe to the fountain in the village. And sometimes (as described) the water source is not a spring but a creek.
Some springs have a similar apron on the spot where the water emerges from the ground - the difference is that the water of a running fountain is piped all the way into the village. See also the wikipedia fountain page for more details.
The water inlet can be blocked when temperatures are too low.
my guess is there is no such type because it is already implied in the term fountain that water is constantly running. In German you have to disambiguate between different kinds of Brunnen, which can be either wells or fountains or drinking fountains or watering places.
We have had this discussion already in the german topic. A “Laufbrunnen” is it’s own type and with its own definition in official documentations and described quite well iin wikipedia.
The question here is if the term running fountain makes sense for a native english speaker or if there is another term which would fit this type of fountain better.
In English, a fountain is understood to feature running or spraying water. Obviously not every fountain operates continually but that’s the general expectation. “Running fountain” sounds redundant.
If I understand correctly, this kind of fountain used to be common in American cities. After all, it was the original kind of fountain. A few of them remain usable as drinking fountains, such as the four waterspouts around the perimeter of the Tyler Davidson Fountain in Cincinnati.
San Francisco’s Pulgas Water Temple was once fed directly by the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct from up near Yosemite, but now it’s hooked up to a treated water system due to health regulations.
I don’t think we have a special word for these in American English. You could call it a decorative or ornamental drinking fountain and I think many people would get the gist, especially anyone who’s visited Rome.
If we have to classify it as a fountain but not drinking water, I guess I’d still call it a tap or faucet, but I vaguely recall a lengthy tagging mailing list thread where that turned out to be an Americanism.
in OpenStreetMap at least a tap is a device to control the flow, it can open and close (and I think the typical expectation is it is closed and you open it to get water but close it afterwards). I thought this is the generic meaning in natural language as well.
I just figured that the water fixture is spewing tap water regardless. In natural language, a tap can be either controlled or uncontrolled depending on context. (A tap can also be for things besides water. Maple syrup comes from a tap drilled into the tree, no valve in that case.)
On the one hand I would welcome some clarity on this (as it is a tagging question that keeps on turning up), on the other hand I’m very much against making any incompatible changes given that (and this might be very specific to the Swiss situation) it is easily our most popular POI dataset (and it is the only data that swisstopo uses from OSM in country)..
I was afraid it would not be as easy as one could wish to find a dedicated tag for these type of fountains. When they have been designed hundreds of years ago the primary purpose was the supply of drinking water for men and animals, secondary to wash clothes in the attached trough (not all, but some).
In germany where they have a dedicated denomination (Laufbrunnen) many of them have been mapped as fountain=running which is a direct translation for Laufbrunnen. An online dictionary (linked above) calls them running well. This does not sound very convincing but is at least a tag in use. A better tag would be highly welcome.
The fairly used fountain=drinking could fit but
this tag is not limited to permanent flow fountain
lots of permanent flow fountains do not provide drinking water nowadays
fountain=decorative does not fit generally. Many of those fountains have a very simple design and are still used to provide drinking water primarily. So some of them are truly decorative, many others are not.
The only thing they all have in common is the permanent flow of fresh water into some kind of basin with a permanent overflow and I would like to find a dedicated tag for this feature. Mapping them according to the present use - some as fountain=drinking, some as fountain=decorative, some probably as fountain=nozzle would not reflect that they all are the same kind of fountain in reality.
fountain=tap can easily be misunderstood (see the reply of @dieterdreist) but would in fact fit. Used 265 time + fountain=water_tap 672 times
fountain=permanent_flow would also fit imo (not in use so far)
We also could use fountain=drinking (what they have been created for) + permanent_flow=yes + (if that is the case) drinking_water=no … sounds a bit like troll tagging to me but could still be a solution.
I think that a property like this is the best solution. Not sure if constant_flow=yes implies fresh water though, or could also apply to those where the water runs in circles?
same, could also be a property:
spring_fed=yes
Otherwise we would be introducing orthogonal values to what is already there in fountain.
