Is the water always up there?
How does the water get up there? I assume pumps but it all just doesn’t compute in my brain.
In: 1075
A water tower if built as a way to maintain water pressure in a cheap fashion, as well as buffer for times where there is high use.
**Pressurizing water**
There are a number of ways we can pressurize a liquid. One of them is to lift it up high. The higher we place the water the higher the pressure.
Imagine a bucket with a hose in the bottom. That is basically a water tower. We fill water into the bucket and then it stays there until we open the hose.
The water in the bucket wants to go down because of gravity, which in this case translates to pressure at the end of the hose.
If we don’t open the valve at the end of the hose, the water has nowhere to go and will stay under pressure without using any energy. Ready to be used when needed.
**Water buffer**
Depending on how you get your water, there might be a limit to how much water you can get within any given hour. Basically you can’t fill your bucket of water any faster than it fills.
Over the course of 24 hours, you might have more than enough water for your daily needs, but if you have short periods with high use, then the fill rate is not high enough.
We solve this by making the bucket big enough, filling it with water all day. Getting it towards full, when we don’t use much water. Emptying it faster than we fill it when we need a lot of water.
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