The City of Victoria is situated on the southern end of VancouverIsland, in the Province of British Columbia, Canada, and is the capitalof the Province.
In common with all cities of the extreme West, its growth hasbeen very rapid within the last few years. The population of thecity proper, together with that of the municipality of Oak Bay, immediatelyadjacent, is now about 35,000.
The Victoria water-works are owned by the city and operated underthe direction of a Water Commissioner appointed by the City Council.By special agreement, water is supplied to Oak Bay in bulk, thismunicipality having its own distributing system.
The rapid increase in population, together with the fact that inrecent years very little had been done toward increasing the watersupply, resulted in the necessity for remodeling the entire system, andthere are very few cities where this would involve as many complexproblems or a greater variety of work.
Water is drawn from Elk Lake, situated about five miles north ofthe city; thence it flows by gravity to the pumping station about fourmiles distant, and from there is pumped directly to the consumers.
[335]The remodeling of the system, as recently completed, provided for:
1.—Increasing the capacity of Elk Lake by a system of levees.
2.—Increasing the capacity of the main to the pumping station byreplacing about two miles of the old 16-in., wrought-iron, riveted pipewith 24-in. riveted steel pipe.
3.—Increasing the capacity of the pumping station by the installationof a 4,500,000-gal. pumping engine of the close-connected, cross-compound,Corliss, crank-and-fly-wheel type.
4.—The construction of a 20,000,000-gal. concrete-lined distributingreservoir in the city.
5.—The entire remodeling of the distributing system, necessitatingthe laying of about 1/2 mile each of 18-in. and 27-in. pipe, and about1 mile of 24-in. riveted steel pipe; also about 3,000 tons of cast-ironpipe, varying in size from 4 to 12 in.
6.—The provision for a high-level service by means of an elevatedtank of approximately 100,000 gal. capacity, water being supplied tothe tank by two electrically-driven triplex pumps, each having a capacityof 100,000 gal. per 24 hours, against a dynamic head of 150 ft., andarranged to start and stop automatically with a variation of 3 ft. inthe elevation of the water in the tank. These pumps are located aboutone mile from the tower, and are controlled by a float-operated auto-start,in the base of the tower.
A description of the elevated tank, which is novel in design, withthe reasons for adopting the type of structure used, the method of construction,and the detailed cost, form the basis of this paper.
The tower is on the top of the highest hill in the city, in the heartof the most exclusive residential district, beautiful homes clusteringabout its base. The necessity for architectural treatment of thestructure is thus seen to be of prime importance. In fact, the oppositionof the local residents to the ordinary type of elevated tank, thatis, latticed columns supporting a tank with