How do water towers work? Where does the water come from? How does it get in there? How much? WHY! What do we do with it? Why are they in such random places ???
In: Engineering
Think of a water tower as a rubber band between the supply and demand sides like [this](https://i2.wp.com/66.media.tumblr.com/41a34e595c5b56173c03be8486ff95be/tumblr_inline_pjj52sYjyM1qzrgfe_500.gif?resize=500%2C281&ssl=1) so there are no huge spikes/dips in what the pumps “see” in the system. There is a video on them [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZwfcMSDBHs)
Water towers are filled with excess capacity from the local water company when the public demand is lower than average (i.e.11PM – 4AM) and they are used as a buffer to meet demand when it spikes, i.e. 6AM when lots of people are taking showers before work.
Let’s say the town uses an average of 24 million gallons per day. So the town builds a water plant that can produce enough to meet the average demand, now there is a problem that overnight you have to cycle pumps on and off because of low demand, causing extra wear and tear on the pumps. But more importantly you can’t meet the extra demand in the morning because your pumps can only move 1 million gallons/hour but demand has spiked to 2 million gallons/hour. It is not economically feasible to have double the number of pumps needed just for the morning rush and you can’t just ‘hit the gas’ on pumps to get them to work faster without sacrificing power efficiency(expensive) and equipment life(even more expensive). This also doesn’t take into account the water treatment plants needed to make the water meet health and safety standards which are huge investments in their own right.
So if you add a water tower, you can keep the pumps and treatment plants running at the ideal speed and when demand is low the towers refill, and the towers feed the system during peak demand.
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