As Joel and I drove to Madison last weekend, we began to muse about water towers; specifically, how it could be cost effective to pump water up just to be able to use gravity to distribute it. Why it took us over 50 years to consider this, I don't know. Joel pretty much guessed the answer:"One of the big advantages of a water tower is that it lets a municipality size its pumps for average rather than peak demand. That can save a community a lot of money. Say that the water consumption for a pumping station averages 500 gallons of water per minute (or 720,000 gallons over the course of a day). There will be times during the day when water consumption is much greater than 500 gallons per minute. For example, in the morning, lots of people wake up at about the same time (say 7:00 a.m.) to go to work. They go to the bathroom, take a shower, brush their teeth, etc. Water demand might peak at 2,000 gallons per minute at 7 a.m. -- there is a big cost difference between a 500-gallon-per-minute pump and a 2,000-gallon-per-minute pump. Because of the water tower, the municipality can purchase a 500-gallon-per-minute pump and let the water tower handle the peak demand. At night, when demand normally falls to practically zero, the pump can make up the difference and refill the water tower. "
The strange thing is that as we were talking about this, we realized that our CD mix was playing "John Deere Green"--certainly the only song written about a water tower!
And on a final water tower note, here is a picture of the one in Pequot Lakes... painted to resemble a bobber.
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