Perhaps for the purposes of hydraulic calculation, water storage tanks do not play a major role in the design of water supply facilities in buildings.
But, certainly, they are devices that are part of the integral project.
That is why in this video we show how to use them in the water supply projects that you generate in PLUMBER.
You will see that the program now includes our water demands library, with which you can, in a practical way, determine the total demand of drinking water for each project.
In PLUMBER version 4, our plumbing design software, it is possible to include in your projects tanks for water storage.
The idea with this device is that you can have the necessary tools to, on the one hand, perform the calculation of the storage capacity required for your project.
And on the other hand, by combining the tanks with another new device in this version: the pumping group, you can design and calculate virtually any type of water supply system.
To show you the available possibilities that you have when tanks are included in your projects, we have here the file containing the single-family building that you already know from previous program’s versions.
It corresponds with two habitable levels building, ground and first floors.
The proposed distribution here is using an elevated tank, which we have placed in a water network corresponding to the roof level.
Note the terrain elevation that we entered for the level corresponding to this network.
You will see that we have the tank, drawn using the respective option in the Devices panel of the PROJECT tab.
And from the tank, an outflow pipe is created that ends in an interior riser that will allow, by gravity, to supply the lower levels.
See here in the first floor network, the arrival of the interior riser from the roof level.
And, in turn, on the ground floor, the arrival of the pipeline from the first floor.
Also, as you see here, the water heater is on this floor and, through an ascending interior riser, the sanitary fixtures on the upper floor are supplied.
Well, let’s go back to our upper tank.
If I select it and show its properties, you will see this dialog.
Note that there are several options, starting with letting the program, as in this case, automatically determine the minimum water level required in the tank to satisfy the most unfavorable sanitary fixture of the System
This is an option, as you will suppose, designed exclusively for the facilities and projects served by gravity.
Then, for capacity calculation purposes, you can select the shape of the tank’s plan.
Of course, you can specify the corresponding interior dimensions in these fields.
There are also the buttons to edit and set the characteristics of the inflow and outflow pipes of each tank.
And, finally, there are the options to determine the net capacity or volume of the tank.
You can enter any value of your preference with this option, overriding any capacity calculation.
You have the option most used in our countries: the one to establish the useful volume according to a percentage of the daily water demand of the project.
And, to help you in the definition of this water demand, we have also incorporated in this new version the parcels manager of our other programs.
Let’s close here to show you that quickly, going to the FILE page, CONFIGURATION tab, Project Properties button.
You will see that here, along with the project’s general data in this file, there is this button that leads you to this dialog.
Here you have the option to manually specify the building daily water demand.
Or, better yet, the option to present the Demand Parcels Generator with its library of water demands so that you can, through the selection of the appropriate uses, determine what is the daily water demand.
Let’s go back to our tank.
Finally you will see that the third option is to let the calculation of the useful volume be made considering a storage time.
In which case, based on the flow supplied per tank and the storage time that you specify here, the corresponding useful volume will be determined at the time of calculation.
As we referred to at the beginning, it is possible to use the tanks in combination with pumping systems within the program.
For example, as you see in this same project, to supply the elevated tank we have a risers plan with an underground tank, which serves as a suction to a pumping system.
If we present the properties of this pumping system, you will see that the possibility of having tanks in the suction and in the discharge is considered.
And, for the specific case of the pumping pipe, its automatic design is carried out by defining a design flow obtained from the tanks filling time specified here.
This will be presented in detail in another video.