Water Towers

Gaffney, N.C

One of the very first things you can't help but notice in the US (at least in small town US without the presence of sky-scrapers) are the water towers.

Every town I have been to has a water tower but if it's a big town, one with suburbs, each suburb can have it's own water tower and sometimes the same town can have two simply because of how the town is or was laid out (see Eldridge pics below). In fact, even some of the really tall buildings can have their own towers and pumps (such as the Empire State Building in New York) because they are too tall to get the full pressure and need to create their own!

Typically the name of the town is written on the side so it's useful if you ever forget where you are :) Sometimes they get into school spirit and are decorated with the local school team, or if they're famous for something. Honolulu Hawaii for example has a pineapple shaped one but there are also strawberries, corn, peaches (like the one from Gaffney North Carolina to the left)... Just type "water tower" into a google search and you'll get lots of images (some are really quite clever).

They can also vary in size and shape. I saw one the other day that I'm convinced was the cause of all the spaceship photos... it was large, silver and rose out from a thicket of trees.

Unlike in most places in Australia, the US uses water towers instead of reservoirs. In fact any time I've mentioned to anyone about the lack of water towers they've asked me in astonishment "how do you get your water then?". I admit I don't know much about how reservoirs work but I know I get water! but this lack of knowledge can also be said for many American's and their water towers. Luckily we have the internet to answer our questions :)

How Stuff Works - Water Towers

The image to my left is from this site: http://www.howstuffworks.com/water.htm which explains (in length) how water towers work. But, in short, water towers are tall to create water pressure. They also hold a large amount of water without taking up a lot of ground space (like a reservoir does). In fact a typical water tower can hold 1.5million gallons (over 5.68 million litres) of water. There's a lot more to it than that so please read the link above if you're interested :)

Here are some pictures of some of the variations of towers available... bearing in mind there are other different ones as well :D

Eldridge, Iowa Water Tower #1

Eldridge, Iowa Water Tower # 2

Newton, Iowa

Snyer, Texas