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
Water guy here. Some of the Europen systems are adding variable speed pumps to their systems, to move water from the water treatment plant to the towers.
This means they can keep their towers at 90% all the time.
However, the most cost-effective pumps and controllers are the common on/off type that have one speed.
I’m sure you can imagine that huge pumps kicking on and off to maintain flow and pressure would cause pressure spikes and dips in the system.
In order to maintain an even steady pressure, you put a water tower between the pumps and the faucets.
When the water level gets down to 1/2, the pumps turn on, and at 95%, they turn off.
The sheer size of the water towers is because of their primary priority, which is fire fighting.
I found this out when discussing the failure of the softening system at the water plant.
Consumers were told that the water would not be softened for a week or so, and we were told that the towers must remain above 1/2 under all conditions because of fire-fighting needs during a power outage (no pumps available).
The water plant has a back-up generator, but they also have redundancies for emergencies.
1) The towers provide a fire-fighting reserve in case of a power outage.
2) The towers even-out the pressure and flow of water through the system, so its steady
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