Roman water supply

Residents of modern Rome still use the old Roman water supply, built even ancient: solidly erected Roman slaves waterworks.

Residents of modern Rome still use the old Roman water supply, built even ancient: solidly erected Roman slaves waterworks

Not that it is necessary to tell about knowledge of the Roman engineers supervising these works. Roman water pipe was laid not in the ground, but above it, on high stone pillars. What was this for? Is not it easier to lay pipes in the ground, as is done now? Of course, it is simpler, but the Roman engineers of that time had a very vague idea of the laws of the communicating vessels. They feared that in water bodies connected by a very long pipe, the water would not settle at the same level. If the water pipe is laid in the ground, following the slopes of the soil, then in some areas the water should flow upwards - and the Romans were afraid that the water would not rise up. Therefore, they usually gave the waterway a uniform downward bias along its entire path (and for this it was often necessary either to keep water bypassing, or erect high arched supports). One Roman aqueduct, Aqua Marcia, has a length of 100 km, while the direct distance between its ends is half that. Half a hundred kilometers of masonry had to be built because of ignorance of the elementary law of physics!

The Romans built numerous Roman water pipes to deliver water to the cities and to industrial places. In the city of Rome itself, water was supplied through 11 aqueducts that had been built for 500 years and had a total length of almost 350 kilometers. However, only 47 kilometers of them were above ground: the majority passed under the ground. The longest Roman aqueduct was built in the 2nd century AD to supply water to Carthage (now this place is in the territory of modern Tunisia), its length was 141 kilometers.

Roman water pipes were extremely complex structures, they were technologically not outdated even a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire. They were built with remarkable accuracy: the Roman waterpipe Pont du Gard in Provence had a slope of only 34 cm per kilometer (1:3000), descending only 17 meters vertically for all its length of 50 kilometers.

Water pipes are constructed of stone, brick, reinforced concrete or steel. Such structures consist of a base on which stone, cast-iron or brick supports are built (usually stone archs are placed between them for stability), and a coastal stand on which pipes are laid or cuvettes are laid. The Roman water supply was built of stone.

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