On NY’s rooftops, old-style wooden water tanks hang tough
The containers are more popular than ever in the city of skyscrapers
They are part of New York’s skyline and millions of people unknowingly depend on them: behold, the venerable rooftop water tank, made of plain old wood.
And forget about technology and innovation and all that. The tanks are more popular than ever in this city of skyscrapers.
Here, any building higher than six storeys must be fitted to pump water to the roof for the higher floors, where it is stored in a tank. That’s because the pressure in the city water system is too weak to get it up there. Gravity takes over for it to flow back downward.
On this spring day, a tankbuilding foreman named Terrance Stokes and his crew are at work at a posh building on Lexington Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
In seven hours, they will take down one four-metrehigh depository and replace it with a new one. Their employer is Isseks Brothers, one of three companies that share the rooftop water tank market in the most populous American city. In total, there are around 10,000 tanks.
The tools they use have evolved a bit, but for the most part, a water tank is set up today the same way it was in 1890, when the Isseks brothers, immigrants from Poland, founded their company.
“That’s the beautiful thing. It’s so simplistic,” said David Hochhauser, a co-owner of the firm.
Wooden water tanks — which also serve as protection against fire — have lots of advantages over tanks made from other materials, even atop a 400-metre-high building.
The cost is reasonable — between $35,000 (Dh128,537) and $100,000 — as compared to what a tank made from fibreglass or steel goes for — double or triple that much.
They are also quicker to install — just one day as opposed to at least a week for the other kinds.