To Help Visitors Get The Most From Our Site

This website is not only a product support tool for our dealers selling Ritchie to their interested customers, but also as a way of serving the animal owners of Texas who may not have a dealer close by. It is for everyone to enjoy and use. Even nation-wide customers, who can’t actually purchase on our site, can still do research & gather information here on RitchieInTexas.com. You will find testimonials and animals acting as your sales "assistant". Watch Clinton Anderson go to the factory and build an Ecofount fountain - in the bottom half of the homepage you'll see the link to that video. There are lots of other fun pages, videos, activities, history, & information.

About 240 volt product:
We have been asked so seldom for 240v product, that we decided to list only the 120v fountains, parts & information on this website. But you can call us anytime for 240v product and special order it.

About Colors:
Also, we don't sell many large green colored fountains, but we put many of them on our site anyway. There might be folks who have purchased them in the past and need information, parts, etc. Selling the green colored smaller fountains that ship free has been easy. But on the larger green fountains, we are sometimes told by the factory that they are not available, or they are "build-to-order only" and may have minimum quantity requirements. "Build-to-order" means they are not in stock, they will be made when a qualifying order is placed. In the beginning, doing colors seemed like a good idea, but it was soon discovered that the endeavor contained a number of inherent problems so units made in the green color began to be limited to smaller fountains and a 5% higher price assigned to them to cover resin scrap & waste in making the change-over from one color to another. At any rate, we'll be happy to gather the options and information for you when an interest arises in colored units other than red/yellow. If the order is large enough, most any model could be considered for most any color. The factory has even made fountains match the school colors of colleges and universities. Let's at least talk about it if you are interested!
 
P-V, P-O, PQR, SPEC, FOOT, V1, V2, MAN: Try these links in the Example of a Watermatic 150...These links are attached to all fountains and allow for very quick and easy access to parts views, parts ordering page, parts quick reference, downloads & printouts of specifications, footprints, owner's manuals, and even informative video viewings. By the way, we have also placed appropriate video links on fountain family and information pages for your convenience.
Example: A video of how to clean an EcoFount is on the EcoFount family page.
 
Please notice the detailed preview summary alerts we’ve provided on the fountain summary page and parts summary page. Before you click the links printed in blue that go with the various groups, you get a “heads up” on what you are about to see when you get there. On the group pages the items are in aplpha order by name - but if you know the sku#, use the "sort by" feature and force sku# ascending sort, you eyes can travel down to the fountain (or part) fairly quickly. You can also affect the listing order yourself in other ways by using the "sort-by" feature. Some of the pages have a lot of product on it and with all the graphics that have to load, they can fill rather slowly. Those of you with fast internet connections may not notice it much. But if your screens do fill slowly, we can apologize for the wait, but not the content...there will be a lot to see. We tried using the listings only, which will load faster, but without pictures, it's really hard to find what you are looking for without going "buggy-eyed".

One more very powerful shopping tool is the "GO STRAIGHT TO IT" feature. When you see it there on top of the summary pages, it allows you a chance to go straight to the waterers (or parts) you want without viewing a group page first.
The "GO STRAIGHT TO IT" link takes you straight to both fountains & repair parts. The "GO STRAIGHT TO IT - F" link takes you to fountains only, & the "GO STRAIGHT TO IT - P" link takes you to parts only.

GO STRAIGHT TO IT features:
Fountains: There are fountain number links, and abbreviated names of fountains links.
Parts: There are part number links, parts-of-a-kind links, and parts page links by fountain numbers and abbreviated fountain names.

We have created a special "Parts Quick Reference" grid, or “Parts-At-A-Glance” chart showing the most often needed & ordered items for all the currently made fountains on a two page view. It shows the actual factory shipped valves, but it also shows what to order if you wish to change to other pressure rated valves on your fountain. The "PQR" link activates this page from any fountain product, and for convenience, we have also made this option viewable from the valves group page and the side panels & covers page. The parts listed on page one are valves, brackets, floats, float hardware, heaters, heater cables, drain plugs, etc. Page two is access panels & hardware, valve box covers, and parts accessories packages (like was shipped with your fountain when it was new).
 
Links are always in blue print. Many photos and images are also links – the ones that are not a link will usually give you an enlargement of the photo for a better look. You can print the picture, save it, or use your computers' viewer adjustment to manipulate the image to your liking. Our site may look a little bit rustic, but we've used larger easy-to-read print, with a variety of fonts to give the eye a break from the same old thing. We have a 22 acre spread of warehouses and pipe yard here at our location in Slaton, Texas. We don't scrunch everything up over in the corner of our spacious pipe yard. Instead, we "spread out and use it all". That's the way this website is built too.
 
Some links, like the ones that help with installation downloads, will take you to the factory site. When this happens, just know that you must use your browser “back” button to return to RitchieInTexas.com. The warranty policy for both Becker's and Ritchie is on the warranty page - but you can also link to the factory site to make sure they haven't made any changes where it is printed there. 

Our website gives good, helpful instructions on how to use the distributor locator tool. For those customers who are not in our territory, they can hook up with the factory website through our site and use that tool to locate their distributor.

We also provide a way for customers in our territory to see a list of all possible dealers who stock Ritchie fountains & parts here in our territory. We encourage dealers who have been talking to an undecided customer about a Ritchie fountain to have them check in with RitchieInTexas.com for more information. After doing research on our website, customers should go back to the dealer and place their order.
 
We show the discontinued metal waterers & discontinued fountain parts too – we may even be able to pull some strings and get you one of these fountains if you need it because of space or mounting pad requirements. (call us if you want us to check on the possibility). But in any case, we can usually still sell you parts for them. Our website provides links to information screens for the discontinued fountains too. To keep clutter to a minimum, the discontinued fountains and parts are not listed or shown in the product summaries anywhere except in the discontinued group.
 
Ordering Groups & Tips: When products (fountains or parts) are to be ordered, click the desired product “More Info” link to see more information on the product, tell us how many you want, and add to cart for checkout. All Fountains have the “P-Order” link attached so you can go straight to the parts order page for that waterer and order its parts. If you don’t find the part you need for your waterer there, it may be a part we seldom sell so we did not put it on our site. But fear not, we can have it on the way to you very easily – just call us. If we start getting enough calls for a part that is not on our site, we will add it to the site for future customers. We've made it obvious which fountains you get free freight on, and which ones you must call us about in order to discuss best freight options. Besides our high-lighted notations, if the shopping cart button shows, you'll get free freight on orders over $50.00, if there is no shopping cart button showing, you've got to call us.

If your purchase qualifies for tax exempt status, how that works is explained here.
 
We have built quite a bit of redundancy into our website design – that way there will be more than one way for you to see videos, a list, a product, a page, a download, get our phone number, locate your distributor, etc.

For fun, and to better describe quality, we played with the names of the various fountains in adding impactful and fun adjectives to the families (example: watermatics are wonderful, stall founts are sturdy, omni’s are omniferous, ecofounts are excellent, thriftykings laugh at the cold, etc.).

We also love entertaining customers and sharing stories on our Animal Interest Page. Do check this page out from time to time.

We have a lot of information about Ritchie and its history and beginnings as well as ours too.

FAQ:
Do you wonder what the lower-case initials are that begins each description of a fountain or part? Well, it's the way we force parts to appear in a desired order on our site. Parts appear alphabetically by name, and those little alpha characters are sittin' there doin' their job! Click here to see a layout of the Alpha Tree program.

We really take a lot of pride in the work we’ve done on this project – building a user friendly, complete, accurate, and well performing Ritchie website for our visitors, dealers, and customers to use and enjoy. Please help us by letting us know of any kind of problem or "glitch" that you find. This includes links that don't work, product info or other data that is incomplete or incorrect, videos that don’t play, pages that don’t open, pictures that don't show up, misspelled words, etc. There is great complication in managing all the avenues for problems in a website like this one. Believe me when I tell you, omissions and errors are inherent with no shortage of (oops!) opportunities! Even the government had their share of troubles with website building - JUST ASK OBAMA! lol.

Thanks for taking time to read this long "Website Briefing" all the way to the end. Because you did, you'll be able to navigate through this site's pages & features and be well informed about Ritchie fountains far better than the average visitor.

Gordon Becker