Apparently someone broke a pipe around Guandu and now most of tamsui will not have water until Sunday morning. Or more accurately, no additional water will be coming in. Whatever reserve you have in your building will have to last until Sunday morning.
4 Likes
Thanks! So it’s already been cut off? I had the impression (based on extraordinarily weak evidence) it wouldn’t be cut off until tomorrow morning. Time to fill a pot!
It has been off since noon. ETA for water to resume is 2 AM on Sunday.
1 Like
The irony of a place literally called fresh water is going to have no water…
7 Likes
Well, at least it’s not summer. Coming back from a bike ride in August, and not having a shower available, would be unfortunate indeed. This weekend, eh, not great, but not a huge problem.
There’s a decent chance our building will have water through the whole thing anyway. No signs in our elevator about this, as best I can tell.
1 Like
That’s a little alarming that one pipe down stopped all water to all of to all of Tamsui.
1 Like
Danshui is basically served by a chokepoint… basically that one highway in guandu supplies the entire area, including water pipe and MRT line.
Anything happens to that point and the entire area gets cut off.
Also once water comes back, it will actually take another day before you’ll have water at the tap.
Seems dubious. Is it BS? 
1 Like
For building complex like mine and I’m guessing a lot of the bigger complex, we have a big reservoir that would need to get replenished. I’m guessing that would take longer than usual if many other buildings are doing the same thing. It’s like every high rise you see is trying to fill a small swimming pool at the same time.
1 Like
I don’t doubt that it might take a while for tanks to fill completely up again after a prolonged disruption.
I’m just skeptical of the claim that it’ll take a whole day before water comes out of the taps again. That seems implausible…
1 Like
Ya, definitely won’t take a whole day. Good news is, I just checked the reservoir for my building and it is still half full. So with any luck, I shouldn’t see any water disruption. The building next to me may not be so lucky, their reservoir is down to 1/3.
1 Like
When I lived in danshui, water went out, and I think it took a while for it to come back because it was up on a hill, and somehow it takes a while for all that water to somehow make it up there. I think the outage wasn’t actually that long but it took a lot longer for it to make its way up there.
It’s entirely possible that not everybody in Danshui lives in your old cheap apartment up on a hill. I wouldn’t extrapolate too much from this.
1 Like
Is there a way to check that?! Now I’m curious.
You should be able to estimate it by measuring the flow rate from your tap and performing some basic hydrodynamic calculations. 
1 Like
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I wouldn’t be shocked if some buildings had this information on an app or available on a website.
But accessing such info may require installing an app designed by building management, which isn’t exactly a welcome idea.
Of course there’s also going up to the roof (basement? I dunno!), finding the tank, and looking inside. But I sort of hope it’s harder to access than that.
1 Like
You guys are thinking way too high tech. I went down to our basement, and physically looked in the reservoir tank. The flowrate of our building will not change. There is either water or no water. The reservoir in the basement is pumped up to the roof’s tin can before it goes to each house. So as long as there is water in that reservoir, everything will seem normal to the households.
4 Likes
The building I lived in has a very high draw rate, and if water goes out the rooftop reservoir would empty out within about 6 hours. So they’re likely without water now.
It’s because their reservoir is far too small for the number of people living there, the whole building is used for student housing.
I have it on good authority that there’s more than one building in Danshui.
Is the water back now? As a sign of support towards the residents of Danshui, I consumed only beer during the last 3 days.
1 Like