- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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Even if it was free, opening an app to get water is bullshit.
Edit: Let the record show, I was referring to the chilled water.
It clearly says that you can push the button to get water.
It “clearly” says, “USE APP TO ACCESS”, so no, you can’t just push the button. It has to verify your subscription first.
Free what is obviously app less though.
It only requires the app for chilled and filtered. The regular tap water is still available.
@[email protected] said, “Even if it was free…” which implies he’s talking specifically about the paid button on the right and not the free button on the left.
The implication being even if the chilled and filtered water was also free, having to open an app for the button to work would be bullshit.
I think OP needs to explain because i also disagree with you.
Put me down on team “even if it was free…”
Keep fighting the good fight, it turns out words mean things.
Meh, he says, “opening an app to get water.” I think there’s some fudging going on here.
Water is available with no app.
Certain processed water is offered with an app.
I would rather take the tap water than trust the maintenance of whatever filter they put in there.
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In America, tap water is either “Fine, maybe a little odd if you’re used to bottle water, but probably fine.” to “It’s not safe to drink this shit.”
Drinks water from gallon jugs because the faucet spews well water from limestone near an oil refinery
I know people who can’t tell the difference between the well and spring water, they are not my homies.
I can tell the difference between my cities perfectly adequate and safe tap water, and water that’s from a Brita.
There’s literally nothing wrong with my tap water at all. I use a Brita because I don’t like the taste of my tap water.
I know exactly zero other people who can tell the difference.
I started using a water filter because my cities water reeked of chlorine. Funnily enough a few months later a job listing appeared for a new water facility person and the water has not since smelled nor tasted bad, and that was about 5 years ago now
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Yeah I grew up trusting my local tap water which I drank regularly, and then I saw what happened in Flint and I became a little more wary. I always filter my water at home now.
You can typically look up your city’s water test results and see what’s in there or do your own testing. The vast majority of municipal water is plenty safe, and most issues with stuff like elevated lead come from the home/building itself, not the municipality.
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I live in the Phoenix area. Our tap water won’t kill you, but it tastes nasty. That’s because aside from the hardness, it’s so full of chlorine to kill the bacteria, amoebas, and fungus that might kill you otherwise, it’s like drinking swimming pool water. Anyone who can afford it has a reverse osmosis filter for drinking water. Anyone who can’t afford it buys bottled water, which is probably why they can’t afford the filter…
You actually can use a Brita and similar filter system for that. Here’s a pretty comprehensive video review of retail filters that one can buy. Had some fairly surprising results. And this guy is coming from your area as well.
Oh I have RO, one of the first things I put in when I bought the house, and already had to replace it once, the last one took really obscure filters that were hard to find, it ended up being simpler to replace the thing with one that took more common replacement filters. And I’ve tried more ordinary filters, it makes it better, but it still tastes funky, I prefer RO.
Protip: if it’s only chlorine and not chloramine you can gas it off. Fill a jug in the fridge and let it sit. Chloramine won’t allow this to happen because ammonia has been bonded to the chloride to make it stable i.e last longer in transport to customers. If that still makes it taste bad, I guess a filter or Brita type device is all I can say. Bottled water is horrible for you.
Yeah, letting it gas out works for the chlorine taste, but it still tastes funky, likely due to minerals so I’m fine with my RO.
But then you’ll miss out on the extra microplastics!
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My balls are full, despite my best efforts.
Would genuinely break this on sight
Turn off the valve, service call them to bankruptcy.
Is this real
The scary thing is that you can’t tell anymore
Yeah ☹️
It was. The company went under in 2019 and nothing of value was lost.
I wonder why they went under. Wasn’t that the same era as juicero? The bag squeezer
Reefill.com isn’t even a registered domain. I call horseshit.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/reefill-ditch-bottled-water-for-good#/
There are several articles about it and an indiegogo, if fabricated a lot of people bought it few years ago.
You are right, it is not a current valid domain. It was an Indiegogo crowdfunded project though, and I am guessing it failed.
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https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/178262-56#overview
Went under about two years after the crowdfunding. Guess people didn’t want to pay $2 a pop for chilled and filtered tap water.
$2 a -month- for unlimited “pops” during the month.
At this point city could install them everywhere and fund from taxes
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It was.
I’m paying about C$50/ year for an under-the-sink cold water inlet filter. It’s not a subscription, but that’s roughly how often I need to replace the filter. So $2/mo isn’t that bad.
Jesus, how much water do you drink?
I hope you’re aware that it’s possible to drink too much water and die from it…
Family of four. But I also use it to water the garden due to no other faucet near.
You use filtered water to… water the garden?.. At this point you could use your blood to water the garden.
Not saying that you shouldn’t water garden at all, because garden is good, garden is food.
Surely their price is considerably low, but given the limited locations where people can actually get access to the water, it is not that cheap. Imagine waiting in line with your mobile phone and your cup to get a little sap. You would want a huge water tank to cut down the frequency of fetching water. Good for motorhome users though.
Yeah, surely what this lacked was proliferation.
I believe it lacked alliteration. Should’ve called it Weefill. Do the Water Way with Weefill Water Waypoints, where you’re in for the wettest of whistles.
Also, if a lot of people happened to use the cold water, it probably wouldn’t be cold anymore by the time you got to it.
Fair enough. I stand corrected.
If this was downtown or at parks I can kinda see them providing something. Knowing this is likely at a university library or building its just removing access that was already there.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=(specific+heat+of+water)*12.8K*(1+gallon+*+water+density)
200kjoules of heat must be removed from a gallon of water to cool from 55F to 32F (out of the ground down to pleasant drinking temperature).
Assuming a COP of 2 for your compressor (conservative), that’s 100kjoules or 1/36 of a kWh.
High price for a kWh of electricity is $0.25 in the US. So for your $2 subscription, you can pay for 8kWh per month or enough to cool 288 gallons of water or roughly 9 gallons per day. More than anybody would rightly use.
What a fucking ripoff.
Not to mention that, in a place like a public park, 55F water is totally fine. It isn’t the coolest most refreshing drink of all time but it’s damn good from a public fountain on a 90F day.
I drink to hydrate anyway. The thing that’s satisfying to me is liquid going in. The temperature’s nice if it’s cool but if it’s cold I can’t drink the water fast.
Take unlimited water and sell it
You’re also paying for the installation of a refrigeration system right at the point where you want water.
Sure, but if everyone drinks a half gallon a day (still a lot for a normal person), that’s still 95% revenue which will absorb the installation cost quickly, and maintenance is minuscule on something like this.
Not to mention that since its subscription based, a broken dispenser is actually more profitable in the short term.
No it’s providing new access. Used to be, you had to take refrigerated water. Now you can have room temperature water which is superior because you can actually just drink it instead of having to sip it ultra slow.
The fact that it adds access to room temperature water doesn’t change the fact that it removes access to cold water
Fuck that. If it’s downtown or at a park the fucking municipality can afford $1.99/mo
We need more public facilities. This privatization bullshit can kick rocks
The heart of what you’re saying is right, but it isn’t 1.99, it’s 1.99x whatever their expected ussage/power/maintenance metrics are.
Realistically the cost of filtration is already covered by the municipal water system’s budget, and the power and maintenance is already covered by the cities parks/public infrastructure budgets. So there is a small cost, but it’s at a scale where it’s negligible
Obviously it isn’t, if it was there wouldn’t be a user facing cost. The fact this is a private venture basically proves that wherever this is, the municipality or building owner is only committed to providing tap water (which we see here is “free”) the cost is for the extra, private, infrastructure that has been added in order to provide cold filtered water. If you aren’t US, I’ll note that municipal water treatment and filtering vs the more “Britta” level implied here are entirely different and very much a thing for some people.
No, it’s just what the usage/power/maintenance is. It’s not $1.99 times anything. $1.99 doesn’t enter into it anywhere. $1.99 was made up out of the whole cloth.
Right this is what I really mean. It’s a trivial cost in the grand scheme of things for a municipality to provide public drinking fountains. This shouldn’t be outsourced to a for profit private enterprise.
I don’t think the thing costs only $2 to install? $2 price per liter of refrigeration on your water does not imply the the system costs $2
It’s going to sound like I’m defending them in some way, which I’m really not because the whole thing is stupid, but they’re not charging for the drinking fountain they’re charging for the cold filtered water, which is going to incur some kind of power and maintenance cost that’s while negligible at scale is beyond the norm. Room temperature tap water is still free here.
Sorry I really hate this line of thinking.
I also hate privatising costs for social services so we’re in agreement on that…
… but no cost faced by the municipality is trivial. They correct taxes to pay for it. You can go to the meetings and have your say in how it’s spent. More water fountains means more money.
If it were up to me we would increase taxes so we could have all the fountains.
Refrigerant and filter systems need to be powered, replaced and maintained, that DOES cost money. What math, if any of substance, was applied on top of that cost to reach the subscription price is debatable. Though perhaps ironically, if they didn’t expect many people to actually bite, then the cost per user would end up being abnormally high.
Refrigerated water fountains have been existing in parks, schools, libraries, and public buildings for decades with no on-demand cost to their end users. Our tax dollars paid for them easily and the cost is obviously trivial compared to everything else your local or state government spends money on.
There is no valid justification for this. It’s just greed.
Thank you for stating the obvious. I fucking hate this future where even the basics of the past are starting to seem unreal. Little gray cubes with a wide bar you push and out comes cold water from a spout at the top; used to be everywhere outdoors growing up.
it’s* just removing access
I’m sorry, what?
Is it still a thing? The website doesn’t go anywhere and I can’t find the app. All I can actually find are a few articles talking about how ridiculous it is to have a $2 subscription service on water fountains.
All I could find were articles from 2017 and I haven’t heard of it before, so I’m gonna say it’s not a thing any more.
Oh that’s funny. I still see these things installed in some buildings but it’s not like I ever saw anyone bother with the “premium water” but also now sodastream is getting in on it for I think a higher cost actually…
Ugh. Please let this whole concept of selling tap water die.
I found this indiegogo link from 7 years ago which gives a little more background. Its not quite as horrible as the picture suggests, I think.
There’s some FAQ and Comments that give some background, like this one:
Rier Esor 7 years ago I’ve been asked by a few people: why do we need reefill water stations when there are water fountains around NYC (if you look hard enough!) and we >all have tap water at home? What’s my best answer?
Patrick Connorton 7 years ago PROJECT OWNER We’re also working with New York City and the Port Authority to map free public bottle filling stations around town – these are usually in or near >parks but, unfortunately, need to be off six months a year to avoid freezing and can be challenging to maintain. Reefill is a natural complement to >these fountains, filling in the gaps in parts of town where it is impractical or cost-prohibitive to install a water fountain.
So it doesn’t sound like these were replacing existing free water fountains, but instead offering free (and paid) water in places never offered before by generating revenue from the paid water to support the installation of any water (including new free water) in places that had none before.
It also looks like the project died in 2019.
filling in the gaps in parts of town where it is impractical or cost-prohibitive to install a water fountain.
As usual, if it’s a gap in our public services, the answer is not “let a private company do it” it’s “tax the fucking rich and use that money to improve our public services”.
Those water fountains didn’t even need to be water fountains. This was basically just a bastardized version of what they do in the UK. There’s a program over there called Refill, that businesses and public places participate in. You use a free app that shows you the locations of participating places, and those places have refill points, all for free.
This person probably saw that and thought “let’s ditch the free and the volunteer participation part, build unnecessary fountains in unsustainable areas, and try and make some money off that sweet public utility”
I’m not going to hate the company for trying, but if you’re a building admin using these instead of Oasis or Elkay fill stations you’re a huge fucking asshole.
I don’t see why this kind of behavior should be excused if exhibited by a company vs. an individual. Would you also not fault your friends “for trying” to be an asshole to you in day to day life? Are humans not making the strategic decisions for that company?
The company’s not trying to be an asshole it’s trying to make some money
I mean people can develop and sell whatever product they want at the price they want. Usually I’d recommend voting with your wallet, but presumably this would be up to facility management to install these for a captive audience, who wouldn’t have much choice in the matter.
But with all the money they’re saving, they’ll be able to renovate the admin building for the first time in two years, or have a nice dinner for the big donors, or give even more money to the football team.
Edit: assuming this is a uni. If not: won’t someone please think of the investors?
Smear something gross on the torment nexus button.
I can’t say I really hate this. If a company is willing to maintain this so there is always free water alongside a purchase option, it doesnt seem so bad.
Because frankly a portion of my world looks like this right now: The corporations squeeze to get everything out of me, and a good portion of the populous want to make sure I can’t have nice things by fucking everything up. A public fountain? Oh yeah that shit will get destroyed or stolen within a week.
Here’s something that could be provided for free. Instead of innovating, I’m going to invent a shit version of this thing, give you free access to that, and then charge for the original version.
Cooling and filtering water is hardly free, nor is the added maintenance. I don’t know the context here but it may be something the building should be paying for.
It’s a failed crowdfunding campaign, their last tweet is from 2017
Yeah this a meme. Thankfully common sense, common decency, and the market won out
Yup
I wonder if they returned the $40K
Get absolutely fucked reefill
