Overhead tank: A solution to post-cyclone water crisis | Economic Times

Anyone who grew up in Chennai, or in any major town along India’s cyclone-plagued east coast, knows what to do when a major storm warning comes in: fill the buckets. The storm may bring rain, but is also likely to dry up your taps. Cyclones topple power lines and with no electricity you can’t pump up water to the overhead tank that furnishes the flow. Floods outside and drought at home is the living irony no one wants.People on the west coast are now learning this lesson. Cyclones in the Arabian sea were relatively rare, but now seem here to stay. And the west coast is not prepared. Cyclone Tauktae just skirted Goa, yet toppled electricity poles to the extent that many homes had no power days after – and, far worse, no water. People abandoned homes for hotels where, hopefully, there was still a generator and someone to switch on the pump.Torches can be used for light, and with luck you can find a place with enough network connectivity to make calls. But with no water coming through the pipes, or flushing the toilets, life rapidly gets grim. As W. Hodding Carter declares in his book Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilisation: “A clean modern water supply, working toilets, and environmentally safe sewage systems are what divide the successful from the unsuccessful, the comfortable from the uncomfortable, and the privileged from the unprivileged.”This post-cyclone water shortage was a sharp reminder of the importance of overhead tanks, the super simple technology that allows us flowing water. In houses where they are built into the structure it is easy to forget they exist, though adherents of Vastu sometimes have to go through the complicated process of relocating them to the southwest or ‘water’ corner of the house.In Sam the Sudden, one of PG Wodehouse’s best novels, the treasure that propels the plot is (spoiler alert!) hidden in the water tank of one half of a semi-detached house. Less happily, tanks have been used for murders, though the contaminated water flowing through soon reveals concealed corpses. Last year during lockdown a waiter in a hotel in Mira Road near Mumbai tried to get away with the murder of two colleagues by putting them in the tank of the closed hotel, but the murder was soon revealed.Even when tanks occupy a prominent position on the roof, their constant presence becomes easy to ignore or even find useful. As people rediscovered their roofs under Covid lockdown, the blocky presence of the water tank was first an annoying obstruction, but then provided shade on hot afternoons, privacy for couples or, for those willing to climb the rusty ladders by their side, a way to get a greater glimpse of freedom.Using gravity to deliver water is an ancient practice probably inspired by waterfalls. Romans built aqueducts at a height to carry water from mountain springs to lowland cities. Gravity and water flow allowed water to spout from taps and fountains. But when buildings rose beyond four floors, natural water pressure could rarely go that high and people had to carry water up the stairs or haul it with buckets and pulleys. A few old houses still exist in Mumbai where holes in floors allow buckets to be pulled up from wells to higher levels.It was the 19th century invention of steam pumps which enabled overhead tanks as a mass plumbing solution. Apartment blocks in New York soon had barrel-like tanks on three legs and a conical cap on their roofs. An article in a New York art magazine in 1916 bemoaned “The Water-Tank Nuisance” where architects designed impressive buildings right up to the roof ornamentation, but failed to allow for the water tank that would be plonked on top: “It is not to be inferred that every tank or tank enclosure should be a work of art, but it should be fully considered from an architectural standpoint, first in its relation to the building and its location on a building, and… as to whether it can be seen from the street.”Despite such views, in time New York’s water tanks became a familiar part of the urban landscape, with some now even seen as heritage structures. The same process happened in smaller towns, particularly on the USA’s plains where the flatness meant that water had to be pumped up to flow down. Free standing community water tanks were built at a height with designs with nicknames like Witches Hat (a conical roof) or Flashlight (column and inverted cone). Spheres and other rounded structures were also common, but a few towns took a creative turn and built tanks to resemble teapots or other objects, which then became local landmarks.This practice has now emerged in India too, particularly in Punjab. It doesn’t happen with community tanks, which remain in the standard PWD design, but in homes and a minor industry has grown up in creating eye-catching overhead tanks. They are often themed, like a pressure cooker shaped tank for a chef or a military tank shaped tank for a soldier’s family or an airplane from a NRI’s family, or one that hopes to become one.These tanks can seem like small town eccentricities, but they also show a shrewd appreciation of the value of water, which should never be hidden away. People in west coast states like Goa should follow in finding ways to appreciate overhead tanks and the benefits they bring gushing down. At the very least it might help spread the east coast habit of filling up the tank, and every other container, when a cyclone warning comes.