October 19, 2022 • 11 mins
Water towers are so ubiquitous you can look right past them, despite them being giant balls of water thrust triumphantly skyward. Learn about these surprisingly ingenious but simple inventions designed to keep you alive.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh. Chuck's
here too. Jerry's hanging around out there, just kind of loitering,
smoking cigarettes with her leather jacket on being a bad kid.
And this makes the stuff you should know. Don't ruin
the illusion, Chuck, I know. Uh So this is about
water towers and we need to shout out a very
special person. This is not only from our old how
(00:26):
Stuff Works website that we used to write for, but
the very founder. His name is Marshall Brain. That's his
real name, and he created How Stuffworks so many years
ago and technically is why we have a job doing
what we do today. So hats off to you, Marshall,
because he used to write everything himself. And this is
(00:47):
one of the kind of the good old Marshall Brain articles.
This is a Marshall Brain special water towers. Um. That
was very Marshal Brain kind of like, hey, how does
that air condition to work? Me tell you? I think
he wrote how a condishers working his kitchen in North
Carolina years ago for so. UM. One of the things
that Marshall points out, and we're on a first name
(01:08):
basis with them, don't worry, um, is that you very
rarely run into a water failure, like as a utility
goes the pressure of water. Now, something might have happened
and it maybe brown, it may have lead in it. True.
His point is is that your water pressure is pretty
reliable as far as utilities go. Yeah, like get a blackout,
(01:30):
get internet outage, all that kind of stuff happens. But
if you ever go and turn your fascel on and
nothing comes out, then there's something really bad has happened. Yeah,
there's probably like a break in a water main and
that's why it lost pressure. And at that point, pressure
is like the least of your warries. Right. But what
we have to thank for all of this, And we
(01:50):
had people recently right in about this suggesting this as
a topic. I don't know if you took a name down,
did you? I'm looking now? Sorry sorry, uh listener if
we don't get your name. But people suggested water towers.
But we have water towers to thank for this. And
it's a very simple thing. If you drive through a
(02:11):
town and you look up and you see a big,
giant water tower, it may be painted to look like
something cool, like like a Georgia peach or or a
walnut Georgia peach or a buttocks perspective, or it may not,
or it may just have the town's name, or it
may have nothing on it. But in that tower is
(02:34):
water about five i'm sorry, about fifty times as much water.
And this is a generalization as you might find in
a backyard swimming pool. And that water is very tall
because it needs to be tall because it uses gravity
to make that water pressure happen. And that water tower
(02:54):
helps spell the water pump that sends water through your town. Yeah,
and it's really really simple because it's just a huge
giant water tank and because it's elevated, it can use
gravity to pressurize that water. Right, it gets it going
when it starts to drop, and that's it. Like, that's
a water tower. There's nothing special about it aside from
(03:17):
its height or that it looks like a peach. It's
a really really simple idea, but it's also a really
ingenious idea that really really works because no pump is needed.
So if you do have a power outage in your
whole town, that's why you still have water pressure. And
because of the amount of water in it, they usually
can cover the amount of time it will take to
get those pumps back online, so you never are out
(03:38):
of water. Yeah. I think in the idea that there's
enough water in the tower to cover the town for
like a day. Yes, And I mean I would guess
you could probably deal unless it was a major natural disaster.
Let's say it was a routine problem with electricity or
the pumps or something like that. Yeah, I guess you
could probably deal with just about any problem you get
(04:01):
the pumps going within a day. Um. Again, I think Jackson, Mississippi,
just found out that you can go many days without
water pressure at all if you have a bad enough
natural disaster with the floods that they had. But I
think under normal circumstances, if you have a water tower,
it's got a day's worth of water and most of
the time it's going to cover you. Yeah, that's the idea. Um,
(04:22):
let's talk a little bit about these statistics or this math,
because Marshall was kind enough to do the math many
years ago. Uh. Every foot of height for a water
tower provides point to four three pounds per square inch
of pressure. Uh. He says a municipal water supply will
run between fifty p s. I so you're gonna have
(04:47):
to have. You know, it's very simple math. You do
the math to figure out how big tall tall your
tower needs to be, along with how much water you're
gonna need, and bing bang boom, you build it. You're
filled up with water and you're done. Right. Um. I
saw that the average um uh p s I that
comes out of a faucet and the house is between
(05:08):
forty and forty five and sixties the backs. So if
you're on completely if your town is totally flat at
sea level, um, you would need to have between a
ninety three and a hundred and four foot water tower
to to achieve those pressures of forty or a hundred
and forty foot water tower to hit that sixty. Al Right,
(05:29):
it makes sense. It's probably wrong because I did the math,
but you know, I say, we take a break. I'm
gonna go over my work again. All right, we'll be
right back. So, Chuck, like you said, of water towers,
(06:06):
pretty big. Um, it can have a million and a
half gallons. I'm guessing if you've got a town that's
flushed with I don't know, local casino money or something
like that, you probably have one that holds even more
water than that. There's a lot of toilets flushing in
the casino right well, and that brings up this point,
right that it actually lets your your city save on
(06:29):
the size of the pumps they buy for their water
supply because your your city does have pumps under normal circumstances,
that's how water initially gets pressurized from the treatment plant
to begin with. But because there's such things as water towers,
they can cover things like peak demand so that you
only have to buy pumps. They can handle the average
amount of demand right right, So in the morning, when
(06:52):
everyone's taking showers and uh, they're having their morning constitutional, uh,
there's gonna be a lot of water are pumping through
the system, and that's when they rely on that water
tower to spell the pumps. When demand is less, those
that water tower is going to fill back up. The
pump is gonna say, all right, we don't need as
(07:13):
much water, so we're gonna give some back to you
and you hold onto it until we need it tomorrow morning.
And it's just sort of a beautiful little cycle. Yeah.
And um, the reason or the way that that happens
is the way that the water system is configured. So
you've got the water treatment plant shooting out water to
the pump station, which pressurizes the water initially, and then
(07:33):
that from out of the pump station goes to the
you know, people's houses. But right after the pump station, say,
you will have the water tower connected and water goes
in or out depending on demand. So when there's so
much demand that the pump can't handle it, the water
just starts to naturally come out of the water tower
to supplement it. And then when there's an excess of
(07:56):
it of um pressure from the pumps, that's when the
water tower gets filled back up. And if there's neither,
this is a little known fact your town's water tower
will explode in a thermonuclear explosion and take your entire
town out. Really, I don't think so. There's only one
way to find out. If you've ever been to New
(08:19):
York City. Say it New York City. If you've ever
been there and you've looked out of your hotel room
and seeing, uh, those big water tanks on top of
all those buildings, and just thought, man, you never really
notice those until you notice them, and they are everywhere.
That's because New York is a city of tall buildings,
(08:42):
and a lot of those buildings, uh, they don't even
have to be that tall to exceed that what your
water pressure can handle, like to get water up to
the top floors of those apartments and offices and things.
So all those buildings have their own little water tanks
sitting up there on top, and it does the same
thing that those water town wars do in the small
(09:02):
towns that you drive through. Yeah, it's pretty neat. It's
so New York too, very New York. We got I've
got my own take up there. A lot of those
buildings too, will have a lot of pumps uh themselves,
not just water towers, but also pumping systems too. Yeah,
especially ones that are, you know, flushed with casino money,
(09:22):
or buildings in New York that are known for lots
of pooping. Sure, which is there's a lot of buildings
in New York known for that. Yeah, we won't mention
any though. The only murders in the building building that's
a big pooping building. I love that show. It's a
great show, for sure, it is. Did you finish up
this last season? No, I'm still in the middle of it.
(09:43):
Actually I I started and then I was like, I'm
already out of episodes. On episode three, so I was
waiting for the rest and I think it finished right. Yeah, yeah,
it's all out. We watched it. It's a lot of
fun and just reaffirms that. But don't tell me, don't
tell me the funniest tell me ever live. Man. I
love that guy. You just spoiled it. Martin. Short's funny
(10:04):
in the rest of the season. God, he's so funny.
So there's one last thing about water towers, Charles, that
I think we should talk about. Um that they will
save you money on your fire insurance for your house. Huh, yeah,
I think that is the case because, uh, you've got
to have, you know, a lot of water pressure on
demand if something is on fire, and that water tower
(10:27):
is going to guarantee that if there's a fire, you're
not going to run out of water pressure to put
that fire out. So you're gonna get your fire insurance
rates determined by the fact that you have a great
water system and water tower. Fantastic. And before we go,
we should shout out some of the people who rode
into request and water towers. There's so many of them
(10:49):
we cannot name them all. But starting all the way
back in two thousand nineteen with Lila Craig all the
way to two weeks ago with Magan Stall and thank
everyone in between. Yeah, and everyone in between. That's right. Uh.
And since we just thanked a bunch of people that
you've not met yet, that means short Stuff is out.
(11:10):
Stuff you should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
Hi, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh. Chuck's
here too. Jerry's hanging around out there, just kind of loitering,
smoking cigarettes with her leather jacket on being a bad kid.
And this makes the stuff you should know. Don't ruin
the illusion, Chuck, I know. Uh So this is about
water towers and we need to shout out a very
special person. This is not only from our old how
(00:26):
Stuff Works website that we used to write for, but
the very founder. His name is Marshall Brain. That's his
real name, and he created How Stuffworks so many years
ago and technically is why we have a job doing
what we do today. So hats off to you, Marshall,
because he used to write everything himself. And this is
(00:47):
one of the kind of the good old Marshall Brain articles.
This is a Marshall Brain special water towers. Um. That
was very Marshal Brain kind of like, hey, how does
that air condition to work? Me tell you? I think
he wrote how a condishers working his kitchen in North
Carolina years ago for so. UM. One of the things
that Marshall points out, and we're on a first name
(01:08):
basis with them, don't worry, um, is that you very
rarely run into a water failure, like as a utility
goes the pressure of water. Now, something might have happened
and it maybe brown, it may have lead in it. True.
His point is is that your water pressure is pretty
reliable as far as utilities go. Yeah, like get a blackout,
(01:30):
get internet outage, all that kind of stuff happens. But
if you ever go and turn your fascel on and
nothing comes out, then there's something really bad has happened. Yeah,
there's probably like a break in a water main and
that's why it lost pressure. And at that point, pressure
is like the least of your warries. Right. But what
we have to thank for all of this, And we
(01:50):
had people recently right in about this suggesting this as
a topic. I don't know if you took a name down,
did you? I'm looking now? Sorry sorry, uh listener if
we don't get your name. But people suggested water towers.
But we have water towers to thank for this. And
it's a very simple thing. If you drive through a
(02:11):
town and you look up and you see a big,
giant water tower, it may be painted to look like
something cool, like like a Georgia peach or or a
walnut Georgia peach or a buttocks perspective, or it may not,
or it may just have the town's name, or it
may have nothing on it. But in that tower is
(02:34):
water about five i'm sorry, about fifty times as much water.
And this is a generalization as you might find in
a backyard swimming pool. And that water is very tall
because it needs to be tall because it uses gravity
to make that water pressure happen. And that water tower
(02:54):
helps spell the water pump that sends water through your town. Yeah,
and it's really really simple because it's just a huge
giant water tank and because it's elevated, it can use
gravity to pressurize that water. Right, it gets it going
when it starts to drop, and that's it. Like, that's
a water tower. There's nothing special about it aside from
(03:17):
its height or that it looks like a peach. It's
a really really simple idea, but it's also a really
ingenious idea that really really works because no pump is needed.
So if you do have a power outage in your
whole town, that's why you still have water pressure. And
because of the amount of water in it, they usually
can cover the amount of time it will take to
get those pumps back online, so you never are out
(03:38):
of water. Yeah. I think in the idea that there's
enough water in the tower to cover the town for
like a day. Yes, And I mean I would guess
you could probably deal unless it was a major natural disaster.
Let's say it was a routine problem with electricity or
the pumps or something like that. Yeah, I guess you
could probably deal with just about any problem you get
(04:01):
the pumps going within a day. Um. Again, I think Jackson, Mississippi,
just found out that you can go many days without
water pressure at all if you have a bad enough
natural disaster with the floods that they had. But I
think under normal circumstances, if you have a water tower,
it's got a day's worth of water and most of
the time it's going to cover you. Yeah, that's the idea. Um,
(04:22):
let's talk a little bit about these statistics or this math,
because Marshall was kind enough to do the math many
years ago. Uh. Every foot of height for a water
tower provides point to four three pounds per square inch
of pressure. Uh. He says a municipal water supply will
run between fifty p s. I so you're gonna have
(04:47):
to have. You know, it's very simple math. You do
the math to figure out how big tall tall your
tower needs to be, along with how much water you're
gonna need, and bing bang boom, you build it. You're
filled up with water and you're done. Right. Um. I
saw that the average um uh p s I that
comes out of a faucet and the house is between
(05:08):
forty and forty five and sixties the backs. So if
you're on completely if your town is totally flat at
sea level, um, you would need to have between a
ninety three and a hundred and four foot water tower
to to achieve those pressures of forty or a hundred
and forty foot water tower to hit that sixty. Al Right,
(05:29):
it makes sense. It's probably wrong because I did the math,
but you know, I say, we take a break. I'm
gonna go over my work again. All right, we'll be
right back. So, Chuck, like you said, of water towers,
(06:06):
pretty big. Um, it can have a million and a
half gallons. I'm guessing if you've got a town that's
flushed with I don't know, local casino money or something
like that, you probably have one that holds even more
water than that. There's a lot of toilets flushing in
the casino right well, and that brings up this point,
right that it actually lets your your city save on
(06:29):
the size of the pumps they buy for their water
supply because your your city does have pumps under normal circumstances,
that's how water initially gets pressurized from the treatment plant
to begin with. But because there's such things as water towers,
they can cover things like peak demand so that you
only have to buy pumps. They can handle the average
amount of demand right right, So in the morning, when
(06:52):
everyone's taking showers and uh, they're having their morning constitutional, uh,
there's gonna be a lot of water are pumping through
the system, and that's when they rely on that water
tower to spell the pumps. When demand is less, those
that water tower is going to fill back up. The
pump is gonna say, all right, we don't need as
(07:13):
much water, so we're gonna give some back to you
and you hold onto it until we need it tomorrow morning.
And it's just sort of a beautiful little cycle. Yeah.
And um, the reason or the way that that happens
is the way that the water system is configured. So
you've got the water treatment plant shooting out water to
the pump station, which pressurizes the water initially, and then
(07:33):
that from out of the pump station goes to the
you know, people's houses. But right after the pump station, say,
you will have the water tower connected and water goes
in or out depending on demand. So when there's so
much demand that the pump can't handle it, the water
just starts to naturally come out of the water tower
to supplement it. And then when there's an excess of
(07:56):
it of um pressure from the pumps, that's when the
water tower gets filled back up. And if there's neither,
this is a little known fact your town's water tower
will explode in a thermonuclear explosion and take your entire
town out. Really, I don't think so. There's only one
way to find out. If you've ever been to New
(08:19):
York City. Say it New York City. If you've ever
been there and you've looked out of your hotel room
and seeing, uh, those big water tanks on top of
all those buildings, and just thought, man, you never really
notice those until you notice them, and they are everywhere.
That's because New York is a city of tall buildings,
(08:42):
and a lot of those buildings, uh, they don't even
have to be that tall to exceed that what your
water pressure can handle, like to get water up to
the top floors of those apartments and offices and things.
So all those buildings have their own little water tanks
sitting up there on top, and it does the same
thing that those water town wars do in the small
(09:02):
towns that you drive through. Yeah, it's pretty neat. It's
so New York too, very New York. We got I've
got my own take up there. A lot of those
buildings too, will have a lot of pumps uh themselves,
not just water towers, but also pumping systems too. Yeah,
especially ones that are, you know, flushed with casino money,
(09:22):
or buildings in New York that are known for lots
of pooping. Sure, which is there's a lot of buildings
in New York known for that. Yeah, we won't mention
any though. The only murders in the building building that's
a big pooping building. I love that show. It's a
great show, for sure, it is. Did you finish up
this last season? No, I'm still in the middle of it.
(09:43):
Actually I I started and then I was like, I'm
already out of episodes. On episode three, so I was
waiting for the rest and I think it finished right. Yeah, yeah,
it's all out. We watched it. It's a lot of
fun and just reaffirms that. But don't tell me, don't
tell me the funniest tell me ever live. Man. I
love that guy. You just spoiled it. Martin. Short's funny
(10:04):
in the rest of the season. God, he's so funny.
So there's one last thing about water towers, Charles, that
I think we should talk about. Um that they will
save you money on your fire insurance for your house. Huh, yeah,
I think that is the case because, uh, you've got
to have, you know, a lot of water pressure on
demand if something is on fire, and that water tower
(10:27):
is going to guarantee that if there's a fire, you're
not going to run out of water pressure to put
that fire out. So you're gonna get your fire insurance
rates determined by the fact that you have a great
water system and water tower. Fantastic. And before we go,
we should shout out some of the people who rode
into request and water towers. There's so many of them
(10:49):
we cannot name them all. But starting all the way
back in two thousand nineteen with Lila Craig all the
way to two weeks ago with Magan Stall and thank
everyone in between. Yeah, and everyone in between. That's right. Uh.
And since we just thanked a bunch of people that
you've not met yet, that means short Stuff is out.
(11:10):
Stuff you should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
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