Talk:Tag:fountain=bottle refill

Not a fountain

While you can refill a “normal” bottle at most drinking fountains and water taps, the objects which are specifically designed for refilling a bottle are not fountains or drinking fountains but rather water dispensers (usually chilled, with filters and maybe carbonizing, all of which could be individual properties). Some people tag them as vending machines and in these cases there is a fee but rather symbolic for drinking purposes (5ct/l). IMHO we should introduce a new main tag for these machines that dispense drinking water for free or almost free, so we have the same main tag for these kind of machines (regardless of small fee or not) and we move them out of the “fountain” category, what do you think? —-Dieterdreist (talk) 18:06, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

drinking_water:refill=* could be an adequate key in combination with amenity=drinking_water. Maybe drinking_water:refill=bottle_refill. --Chris2map (talk) 17:10, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Since I wrote the above I have seen more water bottle refill type features and I think the tag fountain=bottle_refill is justified for these, we should rather put a different picture to show which kind of features this is useful for. —-Dieterdreist (talk) 09:28, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I've been using amenity=drinking_water + bottle=yes for this which seems to be the same as fountain=bottle_refill... I think it was probably a mistake to mix the tagging of decorative water fountains with drinking fountains, but I guess in EU they may be more overlapping/similar than in other parts of the world where they are very distinct. Aharvey (talk) 00:08, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

The problem is from abusing fountain=* for physical form of all amenity=drinking_water

Honestly fountain=bubbler is already different from amenity=fountain

Tag:amenity=drinking_water#Photo_examples

1. Useless fountain=drinking with man_made=water_tap

6. Another fountain=water_dispenser for water coolers Kovposch (talk) 18:15, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

How does more of it alone justify fountain=bottle_refill ?

drinking_water:refill=* has an advantage for devices with both bubblers and downward nozzles. In fact, the majority shown already are. Tag:fountain=bottle_refill#Example_photos

Technically you can refill cups, not only bottles. Small language flaw.

However there are ones with "water taps" curved pipe, which one could also to try drink directly from. drinking_water:refill=* is more of a functionality. It's not the form.

Kovposch (talk) 18:17, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

I guess you can always fill cups, so no need to tag it separately, while bottles sometimes cannot be refilled (geometrically impossible with some bubblers for example). IMHO bottle=yes means you can fill a bottle, but it does not necessarily mean it is a bottle refill (=specialized dispenser of water meant to fill bottles), it can be any kind of fountain, decorative or merely functional, where filling a bottle is possible (around here it is the vast majority). If you have a look at the page for bottle=* you can see that the tag is disputed for its unclear meaning. --Dieterdreist (talk) 07:24, 14 May 2026 (UTC)