Water Tanks on Roofs?

There's the question if wimpy showers save h2o? Perhaps they encourage baths?

After graduating high school in ‘78, I became a cook on Amtrak to pay for college. We actually cooked real food back then. I had three routes; Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York City. In New York, we’d get a day layover and they put us up in the Hotel Edison. The city was gritty at the time and that area was a little tough. I didn’t care though, I was from Chicago. But, what I remember most about that route is looking out my hotel window and seeing wooden water towers everywhere across the city’s landscape. I loved the look! I’d never been in a building high enough in Chicago to see them, but from Edison’s window they were everywhere. I had no idea what the purpose was, but to this day I save black and white photos of them. I hope this helps 😂

If you can zoom in you will see so many. Its unbelieveable

Took this photo the other day from the top of a roof tank, and as you can see there's plenty more around. I always take a moment to enjoy the views I get and sometimes get some nice photos

I understand they're wood, but I'm still surprised they do not have freezing issues with these during weeks where it's really cold consistently.

The R value of wood is fairly low compared to insulating materials.

The water tanks made of wood were used for decades in cold climates when water was needed for coal and wood fired steam engines.

When the railroads switched to using concrete water tanks at water stops in cold climates they had to install oil fired heaters under the elevated concrete bases of the water tanks to prevent them from freezing from what I remember of them.

www.farmshow.com/article.php?aid=5321

NYC Buildings with roof tanks seldom have much inactive flow. The connected piping will usually be well insulated

NYC's water comes not from the river, but from reservoirs, mostly in the distant mountains. It travels through three tunnels bored deep in the bedrock. I suspect the temperature is relatively stable compared to more local water supply systems.

Look at those floats!

What does the valve those connect to look like?

@ChrisJ The float ball with the angled rod is on a fill valve like this. If I recall the riser up to it is 2". The vertical one goes up to a level switch for fill or high/low alarm. Attached a good photo from a different tank of some of those switches.

@leonz any time you see float balls and rods for rooftanks or sewage pits in the city, they're almost always 8"

Similar to the valves and floats used on water towers although probably larger.

Good afternoon Brother Jamie,

This reminds me of the Aermotor and other windmills that use elevated tanks to water cattle.

The well casing is as tall as the elevated tanks fill hole in the side of the tank and the sucker rod will either have a stuffing box on the elevated well head casing that has a Tee threaded into the stuffing box that seals the sucker rod allows the water to drain into the tank or it has an large overflow pipe that drains back to the well head and back into the well. I will have to find the drawing I have in my files and post them here.

They can be set up with a tee at the top of the tank where the pump jack simply allows the water to be pumped into the elevated tank and the overflow simply falls back into the well with a second pipe and is never lost as long as the well has a second tee to drain back into the well or the drop pipe has a hole in the top joint below the freeze line in the ground to drain the water back into the well and the pump jack just keeps pumping when the wind blows.

If the tanks are to maintain pressure at the higher floors, it must suck to be on the floor right under the tank.

What's that give you, 6 to 10 psi?

For 40 psi you'd need almost 100 foot.

In olden days Los Angeles had district refrigeration with wooden pipes for ammonia! So I heard. Was wood better in those days?

Leadville Co had wooden water tanks and mains
in the late 70’s. Because of a parasite that lived in the wood the DEC made us replace the tank, they never addressed the wooden water mains that the same parasite was living in.

@Mad Dog_2

Crotons??………………..I thought those were put in soup or salad!!!

And I thought only the people in Boston talked funny

Even soft woods — which weren't used for pipes — such as pine or hemlock or fir — grew much more slowly and naturally, rather than in plantations,

Paul annoying question of the day: How do they make plantation trees grow faster and "unnaturally" in plantations today?

I'm interested in this because my house from 1915 or so is 100% pine, but it's the densest, hardest, toughest pine I certainly have ever seen. I've heard it's "heart pine" which is either due to where in the tree the lumber came from, and/or a specific kind of southeastern old growth pine from that time frame.

I assumed the reason we don't get new dense pine like this at Home Depot is because they simply don't plant it because it takes too long to grow to harvestable size compared to other faster-growing species used today.

But maybe there is some unnatural way to grow trees that I'm not familiar with, hence the question, thanks!

Is this the "unnatural" part?

And 2nd annoying question since we're talking about the insulative value here…which has the higher R value: old growth dense wood, or looser modern wood? I'd bet on the modern stuff simply because it's less dense so there must be more air pockets in there.

Well, you asked @ethicalpaul , but maybe I can shed some light. Modern plantation grown pine is grown in carefully planted relatively open uniform stands — geometrically vey neat. No underbrush. No competing trees. The pines have all the sun they need to grow as fast as they can — and they do. They can easily put on a quarter inch of diameter a year, or sometimes even more, and are harvestable for timer in a few decades at most (harvestable for biomass pellets and the like in 10 to 15 years).

The pine in question is the same species, although exactly which species is used depends on the location — but mostly one variant of white pine or another.

The only real difference is how fast the trees grew. Your "heart pine" probably took 50 to a hundred years to get to a usable size; some very big timbers may have taken two hundred years or more.

Yes and no. Maple or oak — particularly white oak — is much stronger. BUT… the pines will usually give you 50 to 60 feet of nice straight trunk, and you can saw a lot of lumber out of that. You might get a mature oak — 150 to 200 years — to give you that amount of lumber, but not often! And maple is just as bad…

Not that you can't saw them for lumber, it's just getting long straight pieces is chancy.

On the other hand, oak — white oak particularly — is marvelous when you need odd curved shapes, such as for ship building. Amazing how much one can sell a just right piece of white oak for!

Historical oddity: there are still a few places in seacoast New Hampshire and Maine where one can run across the odd towering pine. If you look closely, you may find a blaze on it in the shape of a broad arrowhead. That means it was reserved by the King (before the Revolution) or the US Navy (afterwards) to make a mast for a ship — and God help you if you cut one down, because nobody else would.