Do they really store drinking water? Are they used to store water for fighting fires? It seems impractical to store basically a drum of water hundreds of feet in the air.
In: Engineering
They arent for either really. They’re used to help pressurize the water system. Pumps fill them up with water, they’re elevated, and that means if some section of the pipes loses a lot of water it drains down from the water towers and overall pressure is maintained.
The point is that if you lose power to the town they can still supply water via gravity. No need for pumps
>Do they really store drinking water?
Yup.
>Are they used to store water for fighting fires?
Also yup since hydrants are connected to the drinking water supply. It’s easier to have one pipe system for everything.
The reason for the towers is easy. Water flows out of them naturally. If your town has a water tower and the power goes out, your water will still be there (and as just discussed, the **fire department’s** water will still be there).
The towers are also good because they smooth out water demand. Most water usage happens at two times: in the morning as people shower and get ready for work, and in the evening when more cooking and hygiene happens. To put some numbers on it, let’s say a town has a peak use of 60,000 gallons per hour at peak usage and uses 240,000 gallons per day. Using a water tower, the town can use a smaller, cheaper pump that runs continuously to fill the tower during off-hours and the tower drains during peak hours when the pump can’t keep up.
They store drinking water while also providing pressure to push water out of faucets with force. That’s the reason they’re up in the air like that.
It stores water for any purpose, and it’s tall because that’s an easy way to maintain pressure without running the pumps continuously. The demand for water isn’t constant, and electricity prices aren’t constant. You want to pump water into the tower when electricity prices are low, 3AM for example, and then you can use it when demand exceeds your pumping capacity, or energy prices are high.
Basically it works like a hydraulic system. The pressure exerted on the water by gravity helps to pump out the water from your tap by giving it pressure.
In flat areas like the American Midwest, they are used to pressure water for faucets and such. The reason you only see them in flatter areas is because in more hilly areas you can just use a reservoir in the hills
[Hear you go.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZwfcMSDBHs)
tl;dw: Basically, they maintain pressurization regardless of the demand on the system. If there’s a sudden spike in demand, it can take several minutes for pumps to come online so water towers make up the difference. Also, if there’s a drop in demand, the water produced by the now surplus pumping pushes the water back into the water towers.
It handles the surges in demand, so that pumps only need to be sized for average demand instead of peak demand.
yes, drinking water, the municipal water that everyone uses. Not sure if that includes the firefighting lines, though I suspect it does. The height is necessary to keep pressure. The height and the huge size make it work perfectly and completely passively – it maintains pressure even as it’s drained (height), and the shear size means it levels out the load on the water system.
They’re fine for small towns/areas. There aren’t a lot of fires there anyway, and firefighters in those areas are volunteers and barely even do anything to put the fire out, so I don’t think running out from trying to stop a fire is an issue. Though if it does run out, so what? It’s just a small town, and the water will be refilled by the next day
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