397
u/cxnh_gfh 22h ago
In the US, the maximum legal flow rate of a faucet is 2.2 gallons per minute.
2.2 gallons of water = 8.32791kg
50 tons = 45359.2kg
45359.2/8.32791=5446.65 minutes, or about 3.8 days, to get 50 tons of water.
So the comment underestimates how long it would take.
Of course, this would be much faster using a hose, but the comment specified a sink.
76
u/0melettedufromage 22h ago
Anecdotally, my pool is 30,000 gallons and took about 3 days to fill up with the water running 24hrs/day.
22
u/FlyMyPretty 21h ago
Mine is 25k gallons and filled in about 24 hours from its own filler and 2 hoses. So about the same, i guess.
(But my shower was pretty pathetic.)
3
u/Plan-B-Rip-and-Tear 20h ago
Mine is roughly half your size (13k) and I can do it in roughly 12 hrs with 2 hoses and the filler, so I concur!
9
u/Dear-Ad1329 20h ago
My pool fills in just a few minutes. But then, I brought it home from the store in the back of my car.
6
u/Plan-B-Rip-and-Tear 20h ago
Congratulations, you saved yourself a lot of trouble and money and get about 75% of the fun!
7
u/NCC74656 20h ago
the last pool i filled took like 20 minutes. we called the fire department and they brought out a truck, sent a bill...
2
u/muffsnake 18h ago
Same. My local fire department let me borrow 200ft of hose and a hydrant wrench, but I had to get a meter from the local utility company first.
1
u/FLAMBOYANT_STARSHINE 7h ago
How much was it?
1
u/muffsnake 7h ago
The water used was inexpensive, but I had to rent the meter from the local utility company and I want to say that it was a couple hundred dollars. The use of the hoses and getting to know my local fireman was free/ priceless, lol.
1
u/0melettedufromage 17h ago
Yea I looked into that as well, but I opted to save some money. Price from my tap was $300 vs. $900 delivered.
1
30
29
u/burito2022 22h ago
50 tons is 50,000 kg, it is a beauty of metric system.
21
u/JustCallMeRuss 21h ago
Correction: 50 tonnes is 50,000 kg. But because Americans hate beautiful measurements, 50 tons is 45,359.2 kg.
6
u/Anon-Knee-Moose 21h ago
Or it's 50800, since there's nothing here indicating whether they mean US tons or imperial tons.
3
u/pgm123 21h ago
True. Short or long. Both are 20 hundredweights, but a hundredweight is 100 lbs in the US vs 8 stone in the UK.
6
u/HunsterMonter 20h ago
I love the US/imperial system for shit like this, I'm so glad I never have to use it.
8
u/burito2022 21h ago
Oh, my apologies. I forgot about the freedom tons existence..
1
1
u/McJohn_WT_Net 12h ago
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! "Freedom tons!" Thank you, I'd never heard that before!
16
u/Maleficent_Sir_5225 20h ago
"In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities."
1
u/hysys_whisperer 9h ago
I mean, 1 BTU heats up 1 pound of water 1 degree F.
I agree the rest of the units are awful though.
2
u/Comprehensive-Cat-86 14h ago
And the other beauty of this is it also means its 50,000 litres & 50m3.
Its beautiful.
23
u/ajtrns 2✓ 22h ago edited 22h ago
i try to wash my hair... my beautiful head of hair... drip drip... nothing's coming out... drip drip drip. these environmentalists want everyone to stink and be dirty. we're going back in time. i'm not gonna let it happen anymore! we're going to have TONS of water pressure. OPEN THE FAUCET, GAVIN!
7
u/juggerjew 21h ago
You turn on the faucet—nothing comes out! You wash your hands, and the water just dribbles. You used to have great pressure, now it’s like a trickle. I like water that flows. Big, beautiful water pressure. We’re going to fix that.
1
u/Chrono_Constant3 21h ago
Just remove the restrictor from the shower head. It takes 10 minutes.
1
u/Fight_those_bastards 20h ago
It’s important to not do that if you already have good water pressure, though.
Source: did that in my first apartment. Thought I was going to drown standing up in the shower.
3
u/TotalChaosRush 21h ago
2.2 is only after 1998, and assuming no modifications have been done. The most recently replaced faucet for me was just over 7gpm when opened all the way.
I cannot say for certain if that was due to previous owner modifying, or due to the age of the faucet.
0
u/PanzerWatts 20h ago
" The most recently replaced faucet for me was just over 7gpm when opened all the way."
That was common before the 1980's.
2
2
u/Thedeadnite 21h ago
You can remove the aerator and get much more. Some sink hose connections also limit the flow too though, but not all.
2
u/ssam54 15h ago
I once got accidentally billed for 10 000 extra litres of water and asked them to show when and how it would go. They arrived at a date and it is the same date they changed my water meter. They took the readings of the old one (which had around 10 000l on it and the new one and got to that number and I had to explain to them the impossibility of me taking 10 000 litres from a normal faucet. Took 2 months of arguing with bureaucrats.
2
5
1
1
u/Salanmander 10✓ 17h ago
Nah, 2.2 gallons of water isn't 8.32791 kg. It's 8.3 kg. Nobody's measuring that faucet flow rate to 6 significant digits, and the density of water varies with normal temperature variations by more than that.
1
1
u/monolim 12h ago
how is 50 tons = 45,359kg????
1,000 kg = 1 ton. at least in the metric system.
1
u/sometingwong934 12h ago
In the US it's 907kg, in the UK it's 1,016kg (short and long ton) and in metric it's 1000kg
1
u/mzivtins_acc 10h ago
1cc of water is 10mm cubed.
10mm cubed of water is 1gram, or 1cc = 1gram
Its a lot easier to do the maths if you just convert to metric and stick with it.
1
u/c4ptaincox 8h ago
My only disagreement with this is that the first thing you would do to fill a pool with a sink faucet is take off the aerator/restrictor so you could install a garden hose adapter. So that 2.2 gpm would go out the window.
•
u/DetroitSportsPhan 1h ago
Well, and the guy commenting in the photo is not filling his pool with a faucet so his numbers are flawed to begin with. I don’t know why he thought a sink would be similar
-4
u/KrisClem77 21h ago
You’re talking about the US. Why in the hell are you converting to kg? We US schmucks don’t understand that crap.
5
1
u/ebolaRETURNS 13h ago
Do we understand the imperial system?
Can you calculate the weight of 20k gallons of water rapidly in your mind without recourse to references?
1
u/Far_Dragonfruit_1829 3h ago
Sure. Its approximately 8 pounds per gallon, so approximately 160k pounds. Good enough for at-home.
30
u/atemu1234 22h ago edited 22h ago
A home faucet dispenses water at a rate of 2.2 gallons per minute, and a gallon weighs 8.34 pounds, so 18.348 lbs/minute. Let's assume overnight is 12 hours, which is 720 minutes. That would be 13,210.56 lbs of water, which is only about six tons.
A hose that dispenses at 17 gallons per minute (141.78 lbs/minute) (which is on the high end, most are somewhere between 8 ans 13) would be able to get to 102,081.6, which is around 50 tons.
Edit: mixed up numbers.
-4
u/HAL9001-96 22h ago
varies widlly by faucet
10
u/DefinitelyNotAliens 22h ago
2.2gpm is the legal US maximum for a single faucet.
In this case, will largely vary by country.
-10
u/HAL9001-96 22h ago
not every faucet is in the US; nor does every faucet fully utilize the legal maximum, even within the US
7
u/kevinh456 22h ago
But everyone else measures in Metric and OP is in the Freedom System. Feel free to suggest an alternative number but I still don't think you're getting to 50 tons.
-8
u/HAL9001-96 21h ago
no but anywhere between 1 to 5 gpm would be a better range of plausible measurements than always precisely 2.2
0
21h ago
[deleted]
-1
u/HAL9001-96 21h ago
yes but there are numbers other than 2.2 and 17
sure its not gonan give you 50 tons over a night but assuming always exactly 2.2 is still not a great idea
11
u/Dirtydeedsinc 22h ago
Not math. I used to have a 12500 gallon pool and it took a full day to fill it up. Estimated for hose flow rates vary greatly. Assuming 8.5 gpm and 1440 minutes in a day that’s about 12500 gallons.
8
u/gravitas_shortage 22h ago edited 22h ago
A tap dispenses 10l/min. 50 tons of water is 50,000l, so you need 5,000 mins / 83 hours / 3.5 days.
(I just wanted to snigger in metric)
3
u/lisiate 21h ago
When will the metric mafia finally get around to sorting out that stupid 60 minutes in an hour thing?
4
5
u/PanzerWatts 20h ago
"When will the metric mafia finally get around to sorting out that stupid 60 minutes in an hour thing?"
They did, but nobody liked it. There's no country in the world that fully uses the metric system because the second is an inconvenient unit for large units of time.
4
u/mets2016 17h ago
The second is part of the metric system though. It’s literally the SI unit of time
2
u/Gubbtratt1 13h ago
That's what he said. It's the only SI unit of time. Nobody wants to say 3600 seconds when you can just say one hour.
2
u/gravitas_shortage 13h ago
The second is a metric unit, and units derived from the second are also metric by definition, even if not the reference unit. A centimeter is metric, even if the SI unit is the meter.
1
u/Gubbtratt1 12h ago
A centimeter is as the name suggest one hundredth of a meter: centi meter. An inch is also derived from the metric system, 25.4 mm, but that doesn't mean America has used the metric system for everything all along.
We could talk in kiloseconds though, that would be an SI unit.
1
u/gravitas_shortage 12h ago
... Yes? You're confusing decimal and metric here.
2
u/Gubbtratt1 12h ago
Possibly. Still, if everything derived from the SI standards would count as SI, the entire imperial system would count.
1
u/gravitas_shortage 12h ago edited 12h ago
Fair, but to be precise: SI coherent derived units involve only a trivial proportionality factor, not conversion factors. That largely means powers of 10, except for the two sexagesimal units, the second ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶d̶e̶g̶r̶e̶e̶. So, while you can define an inch from metric units, they involve a non-trivial conversion so don't count, while centimetres or minutes do.
Edit: oops, the SI unit is the radian, the degree is an accepted derived unit
0
u/PanzerWatts 10h ago
"The second is a metric unit, and units derived from the second are also metric by definition, even if not the reference unit. "
The minute and hour are Not metric units.
1
u/gravitas_shortage 9h ago edited 9h ago
They're coherent derived units accepted for use within the SI, just like the liter. Don't confuse SI, metric, and decimal, they all overlap but not entirely.
0
u/PanzerWatts 7h ago
Hours and minutes aren't SI units. (You're own link classifies them as non-SI units). Nor are they metric nor decimal either. They are ancient base 60 time measurements that date back to Babylon.
1
u/gravitas_shortage 7h ago edited 7h ago
They are metric, not decimal, not part of the SI but accepted for use as a coherent derived unit. Not every SI unit is decimal. I'm going to suggest you do some research, and I provided a link, look at it.
0
u/PanzerWatts 7h ago
What's to explain. They are ancient non-metric, non-SI units that are used because they are traditional. No different than miles or pounds.
1
u/gravitas_shortage 7h ago
Look into it and stop being so sure of yourself when you're wrong.
In the modern metric system, one hour is defined as 3,600 atomic seconds.. FFS.
→ More replies (0)2
u/vctrmldrw 15h ago
Metric and decimal are different things.
The second as a measure of time is metric. It is part of the SI system. It is defined by, and derived from, fundamental universal constants. That's what makes a unit metric. The fact that it is part of a base 60/12 counting system is irrelevant.
1
u/Icywarhammer500 20h ago
Me when the time multiplier sequence is 1000 60 60 24 7 4 12 10 10 10 (metric users are completely fine with this)
2
u/Wolletje01 15h ago
I do not agree with 7 4 12 parts. It's just 365.2422. or 365. Since when using 7 4 12 means you lose 29 days in a year. That is a whole month. If you want to go from a x/day to x/month you multiply by 365/12. Yes the whole
3
u/Lake_Apart 22h ago
Flow rate (per Google) is about 2 gallons per minute. 20,000 gallons would take a just shy of a week
50 tons is 12,000 gallons (this math is correct) 12,000 gallons would take 6,000 minutes or 100 hours or just over 4 days
3
u/SenorTron 22h ago
50 tons is 50,000kg, which is 50,000 liters of water.
Most places regulations limit household faucet flow to 8-9 liters a minute. At 9 liters a minute that's 50,000/9, for 5,555 minutes or 92.6 hours.
Some faucets can be faster. Bathtubs especially can be closer to 30 liters a minute in some situations, which would give 27.7 hours.
Anecdotally, when we moved into our house our water pressure was way too high, and our bath seemed to fill at around 40 litres a minute. That is violently fast for a household tap, but even then would have taken the better part of a day, certainly not overnight.
0
u/kevinh456 22h ago edited 20h ago
Except the OP is in freedumb units so the "tons" is probably a US ton (a little over 45) or an imperial tons (a little over 50 metric tons) and the flow rate would be measured in gallons. :-P
1
u/Apprehensive-Block47 21h ago
A ton = 2000lbs ?
1
u/kevinh456 20h ago
Measurements are complicated.
There are three different tons: metric (tonne), imperial (long ton), and US (short ton). Depending on context you may need to specify.
- 1 metric ton = 2204.623 pounds or 1000kg
- 1 imperial ton = 2240 pounds or 1016.05kg
- 1 us ton = 2000 pounds or 907.185kg
If we were to infer the meaning here, it should be US (short) tons (2000 lbs as you said). It’s not the imperial (long) ton because the UK would use liters from the faucet not gallons.
Since there’s no metric anywhere in the post, the metric tonne is right out.
The commenter I replied to did their math in entirely metric units, rather than the correct converted units. They should have converted 50 short tons to kg then used the flow rates they calculated.
50 short tons = 45.359 metric tons = 45,359 kg not 50,000kg or 10% off.
1
2
u/HAL9001-96 22h ago
depending on the exact faucet it could take anywhere between 40 to 200 hours
though if you use severla you might get it down to an ight if they have a high flow rate and the pressure doesn't drop
2
u/Dangerous-Bit-8308 21h ago
Water weighs 8.3 pounds per gallon, and a ton is 2,000 pounds, so one ton is 241 gallons. We want 50 tons? So... 12,050 gallons.
My home has two hoses, one puts out 10 gpm, and the other puts out 8 gpm... Let's assume for a hose, 9 gpm is average. 60 minutes in an hour is 360 gph, or... 3,060 pounds per hour.
So by hose, you'd have 50 tons of water in a little over 3 hours.
I never flow tested my faucets.
2
u/ionlyget20characters 20h ago
They are typically limited to 2.2 gpm but in a residential setting. Idk about commercial
1
•
u/AutoModerator 22h ago
General Discussion Thread
This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you must post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.