On Fri, 3 Feb 2012 08:16:41 -0600, "HeyBub"
wrote:

Doug Miller wrote:
micky wrote in
news:43hni71mn90h6hobj0vhe0e3koac8b8dag@ 4ax.com:

In NYC, city water pressure is enough for 4 flights or 5 and if you
have 6, you have to put a combination pump in the basement.

???

"4 or 5 flights" is maybe sixty feet, definitely less than 30 psi of
head loss.

I used to know which it was, 4 flights or 5, but I can't reember.

The other quiestion I've long had is, Does't it matter where the
building is? My apartment building was at the top of Clinton Hill. I
think the elevation was at least 50 feet above those who lived closest
to the East River or the Atlantic Ocean.

My building was 6 stories high, and I lived on the 5th floor. I
think the water worked until the 65-year old woman (who probably
inherited it from her husband) sold the building to a 30-year old
Greek immigrant who just didnt' seem to understand how it was supposed
to work. After he bought it, it didnt' seem to work. When I was in
the basement, the water pump was running constantly and there was
almost no air at the top of the water tank. I didn't know how it was
supposed to work either, but I went to the library and found a book
with a drawing of how it was set up. I gave him a copy of the
drawing, and maybe a page that described it, but that didn't help.

Although I switched to baths instead of showers, I could still see the
problem when I flushed the toilet (Most NYC toliets use a
flushometer, not a tank. So they need water pressure. That's also the
reason flushing has such an effect on the water pressure, because
there is no tank that's part of the toilet. Instead it takes water
out of the pipe, almost as much as the pipe would give. (I had spent
a year trying to adjust the flushometer, but sine there was only one
screw for adjustment, I finally decided there was no adjustment that
would fix it. .

Indianapolis city water pressure is around 120 psi -- which would
still leave 90 psi available on the sixth floor. Is NYC pressure that
much lower? Or is the pump a city code requirement?

I don't remember or never knew what actual pressures were. But I'm
pretty sure the water pump/air pump/ water tank in the basement is a
requirement for buildings more 5 and 6 stories tall. Maybe not
private homes but I don't think t here were any private homes** that
tall. And I'm sure the tank on the roof was a requiremnt for
buildings over 6 stories tall.

**I lived on Clinton Hill, on Clinton Avene. In 1890 it was one of
the 3 fanciest n'hoods (the Hll, the Heights, and the Slope) , and
probably THE fanciest street in Brooklyn. Charles Pratt was an
industrialist who made a lot of money in the 19th Century, in oil etc.
He built Pratt Institute as iirc an engineering and architecture
school, but he built the buildings with industrial strength floors, so
if the school failed he could turn it into a factory.

He lived in a real mansion on Cllinton Ave. With a lving and dining
and kitchen on the first floor, bedrooms on the second, and a ballroom
on the third. All the movies you see from the period with fancy
dances make more sense when you realize people had their own
ballrooms.

When each son go married, the father built him another mansion , with
a ballroom too. Except the last, I think the 3rd son. By the time
of his marriage, the Brooklyn Bridge had been buildt (1893) and New
York and Brooklyn had merged (1897?) and it was downhilll for Clinton
Ave. from then on. Although even in 1930, my building was built. An
apartment building, which to me is part of going downhill, but it had
a doorman, two eleveator operators, a concierge in the basement to
receive packages and groceries and meat , a dumbwaitier with
"doorbells) in each aparatment so the concierge could send the
packages up. A cedar closet in every apartment, a potato and onion
lbin in the wall between the kitchen and the outside, and the front 2
apartments on floors 2 to 6 had a maid's room with her own bathroom,
off of the kitchen. On the first loor the front apartments were a
little smaller because the main hall to the outside took up space, and
they were intended for doctor's offices or something similar.

For the 3rd son, Pratt built him a mansion on Park Avenue in
Manhattan.

So if the Pratt's had 3 story houses, I don't think any house were 5
or 6, although maybe in NYC,. The Cooper Hewitt Museum etc. were
private houses. I have to go look at how tall they were. Still, if
one could afford a private house 5 stories tall, I'm sure he put in
the best plumbing whether code required it or not.


City water pressure is usually in the neighborhood of 50-60 psi (at least in
my city). Here, water is entirely gravity fed from elevated water tanks. The
pressure provided by these elevated tanks is determined by the formula: PSI
= 0.43 x height in feet. So, to reach 55psi, the tanks have to be 127 ft
high.

To accomplish the same thing in Indianapolis, the tanks would have to be 280
feet up in the air. At that height, the city would be dotted with water
towers taller than all but 17 skyscrapers in the downtown area. (Currently
the Lucas Oil Stadium, at 270 feet, is number 18.)

The alternative to a gravity-fed system is one employing booster pumps. For
a city the size of Indianapolis to reach 120psi, we're talking pumps as big
as those used to pump water OUT of New Orleans.

I can't find any reference to the nominal water pressure in Indianapolis.
Interestingly, however, I did find several news reports of the fire
department being hampered by LOW water pressure, in one case only 10psi !