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
Just in case you’re curious 2.307 ft = 1 psi. So 23 ft is 10 psi. Generally the bottom of the bowl is 100’ up, and the top is 140’ So 45-60 PSI depending on how full it is. If you put a pressure gauge in your house, you would see it rise and fall diurnally.
Fire protection is huge for homeowners insurance rates, which in turn affects housing prices.
And, like others have said, you can treat the water in batches, and still maintain a constant pressure.
20 PSI is the magic number. Under 20 and a boil order is issued.
Most water is treated well water. The simplest is simply chlorinated. These days, it’s usually just sodium hypochlorite (bleach). Next is fluoridated if there isn’t enough naturally (hydroflurocylic acid). Next would be filters, kinda like the water softener in your house but as big as your house. It gets backwashed just like yours. (As a side note, deep wells can contain radium and barium which get concentrated in the backwash, and in the last 10 years people have started dealing with that)
Last but not least is surface water treatment, which is a whole different animal.
Some places use low pressure reverse osmosis (LPRO). Here’s a disturbing fact: let’s say your legal limit for barium is 2 mg/L. If your well has 3, then they’ll run half of it through the RO and blend it with the other half, so now it’s down to 1.5, which is within the limit.
I worked for a municipal engineering design firm for many years, then jumped ship 7 years ago to work directly for a municipality.
What else do you want to know?
Latest Answers