Kaiser Ferdinand's aqueduct
The Kaiser-Ferdinands-Wasserleitung was the Viennese water supply with the most widely branched pipe network in the city of Vienna until the first high spring water pipeline was built . The groundwater was extracted from the banks of the Danube Canal in Spittelau .
Starting position
The city of Vienna was mainly supplied with water from domestic wells. Since the quality of the groundwater deteriorated due to the lack of a sewer system and this increasingly became the trigger for diseases and epidemics, water pipes were increasingly being built into the city from the west and south. In most cases the beneficiaries of these facilities were mainly the imperial court, the nobility and the monasteries. The broad mass of the Viennese population only had the opportunity to obtain better quality drinking water at a few fountains in the city, which was usually given to them free of charge.
The first aqueduct with a slightly larger area coverage was the Albertine aqueduct , built between 1803 and 1804 , which carried spring water from the Hütteldorf area to Vienna.
history
The decision to build the aqueduct named after him was made by Emperor Ferdinand in 1835. Construction began in 1836 and the Lower Austrian provincial government was in charge of the construction supervision. In 1841 the waterworks started operating.
For financial reasons, the waterworks was handed over to the City of Vienna in 1843, which immediately afterwards, because of the insufficient productivity of the system, first extended the suction channels and then replaced the pumping system.
With the commissioning of the First Vienna High Spring Water Pipeline in 1873, the Kaiser Ferdinands Water Pipeline was initially shut down, but later put into operation twice again due to lack of water due to insufficient spring discharge of the high spring water pipeline, namely during the winter months of 1876/1877 and 1877/1878. The complete closure of the waterworks was decided in 1907 by the local council.
The pump house, which had been converted into a warehouse, was only demolished in 1965 to make way for the Spittelau waste incineration plant .
financing
The construction of the Kaiser-Ferdinand-Wasserleitung was financed from the building fund, into which the coronation gift of the Archduchy of Lower Austria , water purchase capital and other subsidies were brought in.
Under the title "water purchase capital" , those funds went into the building fund, which the buyers - originally the 18 suburban communities for the outlet wells built in their municipal area as well as the owners of public buildings, after the expansion of the Kaiser-Ferdinand water pipeline also private buyers - as a single payment had to pay a flat rate per delivered bucket of water per day. In addition, an annual management fee was charged.
After the opening of the first high spring water pipeline, the private water supply rights acquired in this way were either redeemed in cash or replaced by high spring water.
The most important main delivery points until recently were the outlet wells. For their connection to the Kaiser-Ferdinand-Wasserleitung, the 18 suburban communities had to raise a total of 415,025 guilders, which could be paid in installments.
Since this sum was not available in full due to the possible installment payments during the construction period, the building fund in 1843 was exhausted. The Kaiser-Ferdinand-Wasserleitung was then handed over to the City of Vienna with the obligation to take care of the further expansion and to take over the outstanding bills. In return, the city received the right to sell the water to private customers.
technology
The pump house of the Kaiser-Ferdinand-Wasserleitung was built on the area of today's waste incineration plant Spittelau. The associated suction canals were located north of it on the area between the Danube Canal and the Kaiser-Franz-Josephs-Bahn , which was opened in this section on June 23, 1870.
System for water extraction
In the first stage, a 38-meter-long, stone-walled suction channel was built on a wooden grate , a kind of horizontal well. Its bottom was 2.6 meters below the local water level of the Danube Canal. A delivery volume of 5,600 cubic meters was expected, although this was usually well below this level during the winter months.
After the handover to the City of Vienna in 1843, the suction channel was expanded to a length of 342 meters. As expected, this resulted in an increase in the delivery rate, but in the meantime the per capita water consumption had also increased, so that the Kaiser-Ferdinands-Wasserleitung was still unable to meet the water demand.
Between 1853 and 1854, the resolution was implemented to compensate for the shortfall with artificially filtered water from the Danube Canal. For this purpose, a filtration basin 190 meters in length and a brick collecting basin at each end was built. One of the collecting basins was connected to the Danube Canal by means of a pipeline, while the second was connected to the pump house by another pipeline and an old suction channel in order to feed the filtered water into the pipe network. Gravel with which the basin was filled was used as a filter.
With this filter system it was finally possible to supply sufficient drinking water of initially good quality. However, the filter system soon lost its effectiveness and since no possibility of replacing the filters was planned when the system was built, the water quality quickly fell.
In the last expansion stage in 1859, newly constructed suction channels were lowered down to the water-impermeable soil layer at a depth of around 5 meters below the water level. In addition, a 4 × 8 meter suction basin was built for the pumps. Between 1860 and 1862 an adjoining 455 meter long suction channel and in 1869 another 80 meter long suction channel were built. The originally built suction channels only served as a transport line.
System for pumping water
The nacelle of Emperor Ferdinand aqueduct was originally with two 45 kilowatt strong Watt equipped 'rule steam engines. For the installation of another 74 kilowatt Woolf compound pump in 1859, the machine house had to be expanded.
After this and the construction of the suction basin, the two old pumps were set deeper. Between 1868 and 1869 these pumps were converted into Woolf's compound pumps.
The double-acting pumps had to overcome a delivery head of around 55 meters. The suction pipes had a nominal width of 30 inches (today corresponds to DN 750), the drinking water was discharged through two pipes with a nominal width of 14 inches each. Air tanks were installed to protect against pressure surges and a tower with ventilation and compensation pipes was built on the Währinger water tank.
Water distribution system
From the machine house in Spittelau, the water was distributed to a total of three water tanks through two pipes , each with a nominal width of 14 inches (comparable to DN 350).
- The Währing water reservoir in today's Anton Baumann Park was the smallest. It only held 141,250 liters. The so-called Währinger water tower did not serve as a water tank to increase the pressure in the pipeline network, but only contained four riser pipes for ventilation and to compensate for the impact of the pumps. Here the 14-inch pressure pipes were interrupted and their four ends were connected to the riser pipes.
- The Neulerchenfeld water reservoir was located near the Breitenfelderkirche and held about 339 cubic meters of water.
- The Schmelz water reservoir was located near the former western railway line in the area of today's Urban-Loritz-Platz and held 1,017 cubic meters of water.
The pipeline network with a nominal diameter of 3 to 14 inches had a total length of around 93 kilometers, supplied 264 outlet wells and over 700 public and private houses in all parts of the city except Leopoldstadt and Landstrasse . In addition, 16 wells and 8 buildings were connected to the pipeline network in Währing , Hernals , Neulerchenfeld , Sechshaus and Gaudenzdorf .
In order to be able to supply Margareten and Wieden with water, the Wien River was crossed near today's Brückengasse .
Water quality
The water quality was bad.
While the water obtained by means of the suction channels was soil filtrate, the water taken directly from the Danube Canal was artificially filtered in a filter system, the filtering effect of which soon waned and which could not be renewed. Investigations revealed scales from butterflies, fibers from sheep's wool and even bird feathers. Fighting pathogens in the water was just as impossible .
Frequent cloudiness was another problem, especially during the summer months. In addition, the water often warmed up to temperatures of up to 20 degrees Celsius.
Despite the numerous water pipes, which only supplied water in small quantities and mostly only for a limited group of people from the southern and western environs of the city, the Kaiser-Ferdinand water pipe remained in operation until the opening of the first Viennese spring water pipe due to a lack of usable alternatives .
Holdover
- As a structural memorial to the Kaiser-Ferdinand-Wasserleitung, the listed Währinger water tower on the Wiener Gürtel in the 18th district of Währing was preserved.
- Another souvenir of this water pipe is the Austriabrunnen on the Freyung . This was consecrated on the occasion of the completion of the aqueduct in 1846 and endowed with 180,800 liters of water a day
- A group of figures, which was originally located on the pump house of the Kaiser-Ferdinand water pipeline and was set up on the grounds of the Rosenhügel water reservoir from 1973, was together with the emperor's coat of arms exhibited in the Kaiserbrunn water pipeline museum on the occasion of the opening of the Vienna Water World on the old valve chamber of the former water reservoir Schmelz (now: Meiselmarkt ) set up
- The water pipeline meadow in the Spittelau north of the waste incineration plant was retained as the field name , and the depot built there for the Vienna subway was also given the name Wasserleitungswiese depot
literature
- The water supply of the city of Vienna in its past and present - memorandum for the opening of the high spring water pipeline in 1873 , based on official data edited by Rudolf Stadler, Vienna, 1873, self-published by the Vienna City Council
- The Kaiser Ferdinand aqueduct in Vienna , compiled by Ing.Alois Schneider, building inspector of the Vienna City Building Office, Vienna, 1912
- Josef Donner: To refresh you, my beloved Vienna - History of water supply from its beginnings to 1910 , Norka Verlag Dr. Norbert Kastelic, ISBN 3-85126-25-2
- Ruth Koblizek, Nicole Süssenbek: Water in every citizen's house - The drinking water supply of Vienna , MEMO Association for Historical Research , Vienna, 2003, ISBN 3-9501238-2-2
- Ignatz Moser, Adjunct at the chemical laboratory of the kk polytechnic institute in Vienna: About Th. Clark's method of determining the hardness of water using a titrated soap solution . In: Kaiserl. Academy of Sciences in Vienna (ed.): Session reports of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Mathematical and scientific class . K.-K. Court and state printing in commission with W. Braumüller, Vienna 1850, 2. Danube water from the Kaiser Ferdindans water pipe , p. 498 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
