On the water supply of Edinburgh : being a paper read before the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, 23d November 1863 / by Alexander Ramsay ; extracted from the Transactions of the Society ; with a map.

Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the water supply of Edinburgh : being a paper read before the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, 23d November 1863 / by Alexander Ramsay ; extracted from the Transactions of the Society ; with a map. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Chrimes of Rotherham, and the other by Messrs James Mihie and Son of Edinburgh. With regard to the first of these taps, it is impossible to keep it in repair for any con- siderable time, and both in order to save expense to the consumer, and to avoid waste of water, it should be abolished. The solid matter which all water, as a common rule, more or less contains, acts like emery on the phig and inside metal of the tap every time it is opened or shut, and grind- ing the metal rapidly away, waste of water becomes unavoid- able, while the owner is subjected to constant expense for repair or renewal. The other varieties are less liable to leak or to fall into disrepair, and in those by G-uest and Chrimes, and Milne in particular, leakage, when it occurs, is easily and cheaply corrected by the substitution of fresh leather washers for those which may have become worn out. In mentioning the names of Kennedy, Guest and Chrimes, and Milne, I do so because of the excellent quality of their work, but without disparaging, in the least degree, the work of other brassfounders in Edinburgh or elsewhere. I submit these taps to your examination, merely as specimens of an excellent variety of article, the cost of which in the case of half-inch loose valve screw-downs, being the size most generally in use, is not more than that of the greatly inferior ground tap. In preparing to give evidence before a Committee in Parliament in the course of last Session with a view to illustrate the extent of waste, I wished to show the quantity of water which would pass through circular orifices of various diameters, each being represented in decimals of an inch. Having prepared the necessary discs, beginning with the decimal -05 up to decimal -4 I ascertained the discharge through these orifices under various degrees of pressure ; and, in order that the accuracy of my experiments might not be subject to question, I had them repeated in the pre- sence of Messrs Stevenson, Leslie, and Bell, civil-engineers, and several other persons. I now submit these discs to your exammation, and the following table shows the dia- meter of the orifices, the vertical pressure, and the respective discharges in 24 hours: —
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