To whom it may concern:
I missed the photo contest, but I thought I would send in some pictures of a older Ritchie Fountain we recently brought back to life!
I am coming up for a deployment to Iraq with my Guard unit in the near future. As such, I was concerned about leaving my wife and daughter with 3 horses to carry water for. During the summer, we usually string out 3-4 garden hoses and it's no problem getting water from the house to the barn. The winter however is a different story.
 About this time, my wife came home and mentioned that her boss at work had a contraption in his pasture that his wife was bugging him to get moved. So she went to look at it and recognized it as some sort of automatic waterer, but it was in desperate need of some TLC. She brought it home and put it at the top of my "honey-do" list. After putting it off for a couple of months, I cleaned it up and took it apart. I was debating if it was worth repairing. With the help of your website and the assistance of the personnel at Otis Bryant in Caneyville, Ky, I was able to get the parts I needed for under $110. Both heating elements were bad, as was the thermostat and the cable heater. Mud had collected in the bottom of the tank and rusted it quite a bit. After sandblasting, powder-coating, and baking, it was beginning to look better. The hardest part of the job was mixing the concrete for the platform where it sits. I was unable to get a concrete truck to come by so my wife, daughter, and I got to mix almost 4000 lb of concrete using a wheel barrel and a hoe...more work than I was use to!
When I was researching your website for parts, I found the numbers on the brass tag of the fountain. The model of the fountain is an 5E with the number 79 off to the right. If I have read your website correctly, that would make this fountain almost 30 years old! You don't find many things that last like that anymore, much less something that has been left out and neglected for years.
At any rate, thanks for making a quality product. Now I have one less thing to worry about my wife having to take care of while I'm deployed.
Sincerely,
Derek of Kentucky |
