Tank of the Year
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Video at the link.
https://www.tnemec.com/about/tankoftheyear/
I know you're curious...
One of the nominees is in South Bossier City, LA.
Watch it being painted:
Link to video -
I like the two winners. They were both good. Also like the "Cumming Iowa" one and "Hot Springs" one.
When in the US, I have drove by one that is painted like a giant basketball in northwest Illinois, as the school team did well in championship. That was a fun one.
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If it weren't for the trees in the way, this would be the view out of my living room window:
The water tower was designed by William LeBaron Jenney in a Swiss Gothic style, and by many of the original 1870s homes. Jenney, a noted Chicago architect whose work includes the Home Insurance Building (the first steel-supported skyscraper) and the Manhattan Building (431 S. Dearborn, Chicago, Illinois). The tower was built on a sloping stone base, and clad with red and cream brick up to a wooden Swiss Gothic decorative treatment capped by a cone shaped slate roof to a peak lightning rod iron finial. Surrounding the original wooden water tank was an iron observation balcony nearly 70 feet high, a popular place for residents to view downtown Chicago, nine miles away. An engine room in the tower monitored the steam pumps used to pump water from the 1,378 foot well. Water rates were set by a water committee, and based on the size of the house: the Riverside Hotel’s monthly water bill was $10. In 1875, the annual budget for the water works was $1600, which included an engineer’s salary, coal supplies, and repairs. The village took great care to upgrade the water works, spending $350 in 1875 to replace the slate roof, and $785 to replace the wooden water tower in 1891-1892. As the village grew, a new well was bored in 1882, and another well, with a depth of 2,000 feet, in 1889, at which time a reservoir was constructed. In 1898, the East and West Well Houses (designed by G. W. Ashby) were built, and in 1901, a new pump house (also an Ashby design) was constructed and a modern pumping system installed.
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More of Jenny's houses in my town:
This one is just down the street from me. We used to call it the "Bates Motel" because it was in terrible disrepair and looked kind of spooky. It's been rehabbed, with all new copper gutters and flashing.
It's on the market right now for $969K - 9 bedrooms, 5 baths.
This one was/is owned by a urologist with whom I used to work. When Mrs. George and I were shopping, back in 1984, we looked at it. Way too much work when you have a 1 year old and a 2 year old. Iirc, the basement floor was dirt.
This one was owned by the village president for a while. It has a mirror-image twin next door.
This one is on the river.
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Learnt this from the first video:
The paint costs $400 per gallon, it takes 400 gallons to paint a typical water tower, and paint job is expected to last 20 years.$400 x 400 = $160,000 of paint for a typical water tower paint job
$160,000 ÷ 20 years = $8,000 per year amortizedThen there are supplies and labor costs. The video also says there are only are few hundred such professional tower painters around and they have to be recruited from foreign countries. So I assume the labor cost will be many multiples of the material cost.
Back to that $400/gallon for latex paint ... other websites seem to quote numbers below $40/gallon, but I re-watched the video just to be sure, it definitely says $400/gallon. Wonder if this particular project uses some special premium paint, even by water tower standard.