I couldn’t find the forum for General Stupid Questions so I decided to try my luck in here.
I’m curious about water towers. I’m wondering why the hell they are so tall, if water is actually stored in the mushroomie top, and what happens when all the water is used up…seeing as how I’ve never seen a delivery truck at the base of one.
P.S. I’m still kind of an SDMB newbie so if that “general stupid questions” joke has been made before, I apologize.
There are pipes that go into the tank, to fill it up, as well as pipes that go out of the tank, to your house. The water comes from various sources, depending our your locale. Some water is pumped from the river, others from underground aquifers, and so on. It’s cleaned, treated, then stored in those big tanks.
The general idea is that putting water up above the level it will be used at assures an even flow. Pumps are used to pump it up there from the source (aquifer/well, treatment plant from a river or lake, etc.) – but having pumps that draw water at a rate that fluctuates with usage is more expensive than having ones that pump it up at a constant rate, and then using gravity as the motive force for the normal water pressure – plus, if power’s out (as it is likely to be in a serious fire situation), water flow is uninterrupted – and it also means that there’s a substantial reserve of pure water for the community.
Ahhhh :rolleyes: probably should have known. It makes sense to use gravity for the pressure system rather than some expensive pump. Much appreciated people. Thanks for the link, Chalk…it has it all.
:dubious:Obviously the system works like a charm, but wouldn’t the whole point of building the tower, using gravity instead of pumps, be stepped on by having to build pumps to get the water to the top anyway.
I don’t mean to beat a dead horse…I was just built with a small hard drive and very little RAM.