PA water supply

[cyst13]

This may be a stupid question, but I honestly do not know the answer. Will the municipal water reservoir continue to be replenished by rain and run through the city's pipes after govt. stops functioning. My game is set in Portland, OR, 40 yrs PA. The apoc was a virus which, of course, did no physical damage to the infrastructure. The water mains would have received no maintenance for 4 decades. Would water still flow through the taps?

[Pental]

Re: PA water supply

 

I would think no, only because without electricity to keep the pumps going, there would be no water pressure.

The city of Cleveland ran into that exact problem during the big black out a few years ago. They didn't have back up power for the pumps and about 12 hours in, we had no water pressure.

However, if you had a well, you might be able to rig up a hand pump...but long showers would be a thing of the past.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: PA water supply

 

Civic water supplies aren't likely to continue unless maintenance has continued unbroken since the Fall. They could be refit with the right tools & skills, however.

Doesn't mean that civic water has to be a thing of the past, however. City water pipes, with some maps from City hall and some effort, could be isolated to serve a much smaller area, and could be plumbed in from elevated water towers and tanks, many of which are already in place for fire prevention purposes during a blackout. Gravity feed gives a column of water 1 atmosphere of pressure for every 32 feet of drop, or around 1/2 PSI per foot City water normally goes out at 30-40 PSI, if I remember correctly from my water pump installing days. User side pressure tanks can increase the functional pressure at the end side, trading volume for greater pressure, and dole flow valves can do the same to ramp pressure up higher if needed. Both can/could be made with PA fabrication tech.

[ghost-angel]

Re: PA water supply

 

Pental has the right of it - municipal water systems work by virtue of pressure provided by the water purification plants in the city. Doubly so for cities that haven't installed Water Towers (like many modern cities) to help maintain that pressure.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: PA water supply

 

Pental has the right of it - municipal water systems work by virtue of pressure provided by the water purification plants in the city. Doubly so for cities that haven't installed Water Towers (like many modern cities) to help maintain that pressure.

Yeah. I meant to mention that older and aggie areas are more likely to have such towers and infrastructure already in place.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: PA water supply

 

I would expect that even if there was a way to maintain water pressure without active human intervention, there would be so many leaks in the water mains and individual building plumbing that effective water pressure in a given place would approach zero.

[CorPse]

Re: PA water supply

 

I wish I could remember the name of this, but a guy recently came out with a book that discusses in a fair amount of detail what would happen to human landscapes (skyscrapers, subways, nuclear power plants, etc.) if people just suddenly disappeared.

[CorPse]

Re: PA water supply

 

I wish I could remember the name of this' date=' but a guy recently came out with a book that discusses in a fair amount of detail what would happen to human landscapes (skyscrapers, subways, nuclear power plants, etc.) if people just suddenly disappeared.[/quote']

 

Ah, it came to me, The World Without Us by Alan Weisman...

[Markdoc]

Re: PA water supply

 

I would expect that even if there was a way to maintain water pressure without active human intervention' date=' there would be so many leaks in the water mains and individual building plumbing that effective water pressure in a given place would approach zero.[/quote']

 

Possible, though in Copenhagen they are currently replacing watermains that are leaky, but still functional after nearly 300 years. They have received no maintenance in the meantime. The city didn't even know exactly where they were, so tried to use ground penetrating radar. That didn't work - because, when they finally dug them up, they found many of them were made of hollowed out tree trunks!

 

Basically, stuff buried underground lasts a good long while. Places that rely on electrical pumping will lose water pressure - and those pipes will probably clog up. Places that use gravity feed (for example from a reservoir in the hills) will probably still have water on tap.

 

cheers, Mark

[CorPse]

Re: PA water supply

 

Possible, though in Copenhagen they are currently replacing watermains that are leaky, but still functional after nearly 300 years. They have received no maintenance in the meantime. The city didn't even know exactly where they were, so tried to use ground penetrating radar. That didn't work - because, when they finally dug them up, they found many of them were made of hollowed out tree trunks!

 

Basically, stuff buried underground lasts a good long while. Places that rely on electrical pumping will lose water pressure - and those pipes will probably clog up. Places that use gravity feed (for example from a reservoir in the hills) will probably still have water on tap.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Hmmm... even if the mains remain intact, I'd think that there would be serious problems with the "death from a thousand cuts" mentioned earlier. (ie leaks from all spots in the system where buildings have degraded, etc.)

 

Also, I'm wondering if without treatment there are going to be blockages in the system from leaf litter, debris, animal carcasses and things of that sort. Not to mention that the water would be quite, quite funky, and maybe even deadly.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: PA water supply

 

Possible, though in Copenhagen they are currently replacing watermains that are leaky, but still functional after nearly 300 years. They have received no maintenance in the meantime. The city didn't even know exactly where they were, so tried to use ground penetrating radar. That didn't work - because, when they finally dug them up, they found many of them were made of hollowed out tree trunks!

 

Huh...that is pretty interesting.

 

I guess the mains would stand a while, assuming it's in a seismically stable area. When buildings start falling though, the pressure is going to drop regardless, unless people have been diligent about turning off the water supply at the building's main valve...CorPse's death by a thousand cuts.

 

Conceivably, if a settlement has a reservoir in the hills and its inhabitants have cut off the water supply to any buildings that aren't being actively maintained, they will be able to have modern indoor plumbing. I would imagine such a situation would be pretty rare though.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: PA water supply

 

Actually, any small town where I've lived would be able to do this. The problem is lack of electricity. A town might be terraced on a sidehill with a water tower at the top, but the water is pumped up out of the aquifer. A town with a water tower on high ground would use electric pumps to push the water up from lower ground. Lack of electricity is the Achilles heel.

I know! Save a local nuclear power plant from being overrun by a cannibal army of urban gangsters and malcontent deserters! Nothing ever goes wrong with undermaintained nuclear plants.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: PA water supply

 

Actually, any small town where I've lived would be able to do this. The problem is lack of electricity. A town might be terraced on a sidehill with a water tower at the top, but the water is pumped up out of the aquifer. A town with a water tower on high ground would use electric pumps to push the water up from lower ground. Lack of electricity is the Achilles heel.

I know! Save a local nuclear power plant from being overrun by a cannibal army of urban gangsters and malcontent deserters! Nothing ever goes wrong with undermaintained nuclear plants.

 

Speaking as a former well pump tech, I'll verify that it can be done. Pumping up to an elevated storage tank from ground or subsurface water sources is pretty easy, because you're not trying to generate usable line pressure, so all you're doing is pumping the weight of water against gravity. There's a grip of pre electrican methods that have been developed to do such things, and even electrical systems can be powered by a Wind Turbine (and alternative to using a mechanical draw pump hooked to a windmill, also an option) or a simple diesel generator.

 

The Nuke Plant trick only really works if you also have Astronauts too, ya know

[CorPse]

Re: PA water supply

 

I know! Save a local nuclear power plant from being overrun by a cannibal army of urban gangsters and malcontent deserters! Nothing ever goes wrong with undermaintained nuclear plants.

 

Think of it this way, if something does wrong urban gangsters and malcontent deserters will be the least of your worries.

[casualplayer]

Re: PA water supply

 

With the amount of rain Portland gets, you could probably supply several people by just having a screened barrel to catch rainwater. If you're needing more you can suspend a tarp parallel to the ground, put a moderately heavy rock in the center to cause a bit of droop and poke a small hole at the droopy part. Between condensation and rain, you'll have quite a bit of water coming through the gap.

 

One of the best low tech ways to keep your water clean and check to see if it's getting unhealthy is to raise fish in it. They'll keep the bugs down and the algae too.

 

One of the first things to go, or have to be heavily changed, after the Apocalypse is living on the fifth floor and expecting running water.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: PA water supply

 

 

One of the first things to go, or have to be heavily changed, after the Apocalypse is living on the fifth floor and expecting running water.

 

No Problem!

 

(At least if you have a rooftop cistern a good hunk of additional stories above you )