Kitchen Garden Forum

Nothing to do with gardening, but what the heck does a water tower do and how does it work?

basically its a water storage tank stuck up a pole used in flat country where there are no hills to stick a tank on. water is pumped up into it , its then available to flow by gravity to whatever taps are connected to it. they are used as are storage tanks/reservoirs on hilltops to give local buffer storage so that water can be supplied locally from the tank at a faster rate than than the supply could otherwise supply.

here we are some 20 miles from the nearest large open reservoir but there are 3 hilltop closed tanks within a 5 mile radius , the one that supplies us is only 10 foot or so higher than we are and there is a 4000 population town in between so our taps used to dribble on a summers evening, now we are on a pumped main its not so bad but the pressure still drops about 7pm when everyone waters their lawns

Thank you. There are two near my home and I've always accepted they were "water towers" just never questioned what they did.

OK, next question. I used to live at Draycote Water resevevoir and there was a water tower in the NW corner which was actually IN the water. Any ideas why?

Funny how big some things we take for granted can be I grew up with water towers around the landscape. Here in Wales, of course, we just use mountains to achieve the same effect.

Here's a bit more to add to richard's explanation:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A13346633

Draycote Water - was this what you meant?



(The Welsh spy in the sky strikes again )

It's a tower in the water, but not a water tower. It sits over the "plughole" of the reservoir and strains out the crud before it gets to your taps.
It does look rather similar to a water tower. Older reservoirs often have more elaborate straining towers, such as this one in Llyn Efyrnwy built to supply Liverpool:



Some history here of the flooding of the village:

http://history.powys.org.uk/school1/lla ... rnwy.shtml

Alan

Thanks Alan

That does look like Draycote but not like the water tower; they must have changed it since I last saw it (I moved from there in 1987 and haven't sailed there since around 1992). It was all concrete, no metal at all.

I called it the water tower because that's what it was known as to everyone; including the guys from Rugby Joint Water Board and latterly from Severn Trent who worked there. A giant plughole then, that certainly conjours up some interesting thoughts.

Thanks again both of you.

Dear Chantal, you say water towers have nothing to do with gardening, i must disagree, have you ever tried getting water out of a garden tap without them.
Sorry for that, but i just feel in one of my devilish moods.