GUARDING LONDON'S WATER.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3131, 21 August 1922, Page 7

GUARDING LONDON'S WATER.

(By A. E. John.)

\ Hundreds ot miles ox pipes and mechanism, in a complicated network, spread themselves over the city. This vast and delicate machine, loaded by water pressure up to many tons per yard, is subject to every kind of sickness imaginable. Not least amongst its complaints is chronic'hemorrhage, and to this is attributable many a sleepless night on the part of our turncocks. A broken pipe secretly discharging into an underground sewer or river, a worn valve face passing high pressure water into a low pressure system, a tap carelessly left flowing in an empty building—all these things happen continuously at intervals of miles. But for the turncock their discovery would be far more difficult than that of the proverbial needle in a haystack. The engineer has, however, divided the network up into districts. Each district he has provided with an ingenious recording meter, and every one has its name or number. Let us see what happens to No. 50 district. One day the turncock shoulders his bar and key and proceeds to ring round No. 50 by closing certain valves which he “has in his head,” so that finally water can only get into the district through the meter. At the same time a diagram and clock (which looks like a bath bun in brass) are placed on No. 50 meter. Around this cylindrical diagram a little pen begins to draw a wiggly line. Jt jumps up and down, and records every variation in the thirst of No. 50 district. Towards the middle of the night the wiggles nearly peter out, and the, little pen draws a steady line low down the diagram. This is the “night line” purple Sherlock Holmes. The following day the engineer examines and discusses with the water inspector a whole batch of diagrams. No. 50 night line is higher by 3000 gallons per hour than it ought to he. Next midnight our turncock again sets forth; and this time, piece by piece he shuts off branches of the No. 50 network until the meter only feedis one short length of trunk. Having turned all the roads round one way, the whimsical turncock immediately proceeds to turn them all back again, and by the time Mr Ratepayer gets up he can know nothing of the turncock’s apparently futile night out. But the little pen knew all about it, and kept a score. On a nice clean diagram it wiggled gradually down to the night line, and then, at midnight, took a series of sudden square jumps further down and almost to zero, tracing a. kind of staircase- on the paper. A few more jumps de pro fun die, and the wiggle started again, rising upwards as the earliest Mrs Ratepayer prepared her bath. Now the inspector produces a diagram with each little step in the staircase carefully figured. The figures show that some of the “shuts” were normal and others too big—each has been identified from the turncock's diary of his night out. Shortly afterwards certain street names appear upon am inspector’s programme. The little pen has condemned them, but it now takes’ little time to find the hidden loss of water and clear the names from this list of ill-fame.