Water supply

Water is consumed by various consumers for a variety of needs. However, the vast majority of these costs can be summarized into three main categories:

• consumption for household needs (drinking, cooking, washing, washing, maintaining clean houses, watering gardens, lawns and fields, etc.),
• expenditure on production needs (consumption by enterprises of industry, transport, energy, agriculture, etc.),
• fire extinguishing rate.

When water is supplied, its quality is taken into account, for example, SanPiN 2.1.4.1074-01 ^[3] “Drinking water. Hygienic requirements for water quality of centralized drinking water supply systems. Quality control". To bring the water quality to the required standards using water treatment . In the design and operation of water supply systems, the accepted norms of water consumption by consumers are also taken into account ^[4] .

The choice of the source is one of the most important tasks in the arrangement of the water supply system, since it largely determines the nature of the system itself, the presence of various facilities in its composition, and therefore the cost of construction and operation. The water supply source must meet the following basic requirements:

• to ensure that it receives the necessary quantities of water, taking into account the growth of water consumption for the future development of the object;
• ensure uninterrupted supply of water to consumers;
• to give water of such quality that most meets the needs of consumers or allows to achieve the required quality by simple and cheap cleaning;
• provide the ability to supply water to the object with the lowest cost of funds;
• have such a capacity that the withdrawal of water from it does not violate the existing ecological system.

Proper solution of the question of choosing a source of water supply for each given object requires careful study and analysis of the water resources of the area in which the object is located. Practically all natural water sources used for water supply can be classified into two main groups:

• surface sources - the sea or their individual parts ( bays , straits ), water courses ( rivers , streams , canals ), water bodies ( lakes , ponds , reservoirs , flooded open- cast mines ), swamps , natural outlets of groundwater ( geysers , springs ), glaciers , snowfields ;
• groundwater sources - groundwater basins , aquifers .

The water supply system is a complex of facilities to provide a certain (given) consumer group (this object) with water in the required quantities and required quality. In addition, the water supply system should have a certain degree of reliability, that is, provide consumers with water without an unacceptable reduction in their performance indicators regarding the quantity or quality of water supplied (interruptions or reduction in water supply or deterioration in its quality within unacceptable limits).

Main elements of the water supply system

The water supply system (a settlement or an industrial enterprise) should provide for obtaining water from natural sources, cleaning it, if this is caused by the requirements of consumers, and supplying it to places of consumption. To perform these tasks, the following structures are used, which are usually part of the water supply system:

• water intake facilities, which are used to receive water from natural sources,
• water-lifting facilities, that is, pumping stations that supply water to the places of its purification, storage or consumption,
• water treatment facilities
• water lines and water supply networks that serve to transport and supply water to the places of its consumption,
• towers and reservoirs playing the role of regulating and spare tanks in the water supply system.

Depending on the local environmental conditions and the nature of water consumption, as well as depending on economic considerations, the water supply scheme and its constituent elements can vary greatly. The adopted water supply source has a great influence on the water supply scheme: its character, capacity, water quality in it, the distance from it to the object supplied with water, etc. Sometimes several natural sources are used for one object.

Water systems classification

Water systems can be classified according to a number of basic features. To destination :

• water supply systems of populated areas (cities, towns),
• industrial water supply systems,
• agricultural water systems,
• fire water supply systems,
• Combined water supply systems (economic and industrial, economic and fire-fighting, etc.).

By way of water supply :

• gravity (gravity),
• with mechanized water supply (using pumps),
• zone (in some areas by gravity, in other pumps).

By the nature of the used natural sources :

• receiving water from surface sources (river, lake, etc.),
• receiving water from underground sources (spring, artesian, etc.),
• mixed type.

By the way of water use :

• direct-flow water supply systems (with single use of water),
• water recycling systems
• water reuse systems.

Materials and Technologies

Water supply systems in the ancient world used gravity to supply water and were laid from pipes ( lead , wood , bamboo ) or canals (usually from clay or stone ). Slotted wooden pipes, wrapped with a steel strip, were used as plumbing pipes, in particular, water pipes: in England about 500 years ago, in US cities, they began to use hollowed logs from the late 1700s to 1800s to distribute water. Modern plumbing pipes are made of copper and plastic, and most sewer pipes are made of steel, copper, plastic, and cast iron ^[5] .

Modern water supply systems using high pressure circulating pumps and pipes in buildings are made of steel ^[6] , brass , plastic (in a special way cut polyethylene PEX, which is used in 60% of multi-family and individual houses ^[7] ) or other low-toxic material. Lead has not been used in US water systems since the 1930s due to toxicity, although lead continued to be used as solder in the process of soldering pipelines for drinking water until it was banned in 1986 ^[8] . Modern drainage and sewer pipelines are made of plastic, steel, cast iron or lead ^{[9] [10] [11]} .

• Hot water supply

• Water dictionary. - M., 1974
• Orderin A.F. Water supply in Siberia: (Historical essay). - L .: Stroyizdat , 1983. - 136 p. - Bibliogr .: p. 130-113.
• G.S. Safarov, V.F. Veklich , A.P. Medved, I.D. Yudovsky New equipment in the housing and utilities sector - Kiev: Budivelnik, 1988. - 128, [2] p. : silt; 17 cm. - Bibliogr .: p. 124-129 (68 titles.). - 3000 copies - ISBN 5-7705-0097-2