Mytishchi water pipeline the first city water supply system in the Moscow water supply system. Construction began in 1781, began operating in 1804. The source is under-channel water in the upper reaches of the river. Yauza, near the village of Bolshie Mytishchi. Water from the springs gushing from the ground entered the brick pools, of which - into a gravity-flowing underground brick gallery-water conduit with a length of about 16 km, then through the valley of the river. Yauza along the Rostokinsky aqueduct to the area of Sukharevskaya Square and further to Samotechnaya Square. A pool with a fountain was built at the end of the conduit on Trubnaya Square, and two fountains were built on Neglinnaya Street to draw water. Initially, 4.3 thousand m 3 of water per day were taken from Mytishchi sources. In 1826, due to numerous subsidences of the gallery-water conduit, they began to rebuild the water supply system according to the project of engineer Yanshin, which ended in 1830. station named after V. V. Oldenberger), which supplied water to a tank installed in the second tier of the Sukharev Tower. From here, water was directed through pipes to five fountains: Sheremetevsky (near the Sukharev Tower), Nikolsky (on Lubyanskaya Square), Petrovsky (on Theater Square), Voskresensky (Voskresenskaya Square, at the entrance to Alexander Garden), Varvarsky (on Varvarskaya Square). In 1853-58, the Mytishchi water pipeline was rebuilt according to the project and under the direction of A.I. Delvig. The upper brick gallery was replaced with cast-iron pipes, the water supply capacity increased to 6 thousand m 3 of water per day. In 1892, 50 wells up to 30 m deep were drilled for water intake, connected by a common suction pipe. Water began to be supplied to the Krestovsky water towers, on which iron tanks with a capacity of 1900 m 3 were installed at a height of 30 m from the ground. Further, the water was distributed throughout the city by a network of pipes with a total length of 120 km. In 1935, the water supply of the Mytishchi water pipeline was 40,000 m 3 per day. Since 1960, the Mytishchi water pipeline has been supplying water only to the city of Mytishchi.
Original taken from alex_avr2 to the Third Mytishchi water pipeline
Recently, the Moscow water pipeline turned 212 years old. All these years, the water pipeline has been continuously developing, having overcome the path from a tiny brick gallery to the modern huge water supply network of Moscow, which is spread over several regions. Today I will tell you about one of the most interesting stages in the development of water supply from the point of view of engineering history at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when technologies changed at a tremendous speed, steam engines coexisted with electric motors, and feet with arshins, inches and fathoms.
I have already reviewed the general history of the Moscow water pipeline (part 1, part 2), so here I will give only the briefest description, and the details can be read at the links.
The first city-wide water supply system in Moscow was launched in 1804 and was completely self-flowing - water flowed through brick galleries.
It began in the area of present-day Mytishchi, near the upper reaches of the Yauza, from natural springs that provided clean water. The productivity of this water pipeline was approximately 200,000 buckets per day (the volume of water in the Moscow water supply and sewerage system was measured in buckets until the 50s of the 20th century, one bucket equals 12 liters). Due to design flaws, this plumbing never worked fully - most of the clean water was lost through the gallery's cracks on the way to Moscow, but instead dirty groundwater penetrated the gallery, mainly from the Sokolniki area. For some time, the gallery was patched up, but in the 1820s its most dilapidated part was duplicated with a cast-iron pipe with a diameter of 20 inches, and in the 1850s it was duplicated completely from Mytishchi to the center of Moscow. This is how the second Mytishchi water pipeline appeared with a capacity of about 500,000 buckets per day. However, by the end of the 19th century, the productivity of this water supply was no longer enough - Moscow was growing rapidly, more and more water was required. And then it was decided to build the third Mytishchi water pipeline from scratch. About him today and will be discussed.
The device of the third Mytishchi water supply was taken up by Zimin Nikolai Petrovich. The work was divided into several stages, stretching for more than ten years. The first construction period took place in 1890-1893, the second in 1897-1906. And in 1908, the following book was published by Zimin:
With great surprise, it was discovered that a scan of this book was made by Google, and one of the copies is stored at Harvard.
In the following, I will give many excerpts from this book, because. in my opinion, it is extremely interesting from an engineering point of view, allowing you to feel the spirit of that time. The entire book can be downloaded from this link.
So, by the end of the 19th century, the water of the second Mytishchi water supply system was no longer enough and it was decided to build a third water supply system with a capacity of 1,500,000 buckets per day. The water pipeline consisted of several key structures.
The water-lifting station in Mytishchi is marked in blue on the map, where artesian water was actually taken. Green shows the Alekseevskaya water pumping station and the Alekseevsky reserve reservoir. The red circle indicates the place where the Krestovsky water towers were located, and the red line is the water supply line itself. In addition, an extensive network of water pipes was laid in the city center.
Waterworks in Mytishchi
Initially, water appeared in Mytishchi, you can say by itself. Springs filled with clean water spouted from underground. During the construction of the first gravity water pipeline, these keys were simply equipped - they built brick pools and laid pipes from them to a brick gallery.
However, the performance of natural keys was not high. The capacity of the gravity gallery was also small. To increase productivity, at the end of the 19th century, it was decided to drill wells and pump water out of the ground using steam engines. The same machines were supposed to supply water to two pressure pipes with a diameter of 24 inches, going into the city.
To implement the project, a number of wells were drilled on the territory of the future station, which were connected by one common pipe connected to steam engines installed in the machine building. Steam was supplied to the machines from steam boilers installed in the same building and fed with oil from special tanks.
The machine building of the first stage of construction today:
And in the 19th century:
The attentive reader will notice that the building was being completed. This is characteristic of almost all structures of the Moscow water supply system.
And here is one surviving (of two) oil tank made of riveted sheet steel. Now used as a warehouse.
Oil was transported by horses:
In 1892-1893, the water supply was put into operation, but already at that time its productivity was not enough - Moscow needed almost two and a half times more water - 3,500,000 buckets per day, so they decided to expand the station by building a second machine building and installing additional steam engines with pumps. However, there was a big problem here. The fact is that the forced pumping of water from wells led to the fact that the groundwater level dropped, which in turn led to the fact that old steam engines simply could not pump water from the required depth. To solve this problem, new machines would have to be installed with a large depth, and the old ones would have to be moved lower, which would entail enormous costs. In addition, it was necessary to build a tunnel along the wells at a depth in which all the pipes would pass, which also did not have a positive effect on the complexity and cost of construction.
However, the solution to the problem crept up from an unexpected quarter. By that time, electric motors were already actively introduced into production. It was decided to try to use electric motor-driven submersible pumps for pumping water. Several different types of pumps have been ordered. The first experiments were unsuccessful. They used piston type pumps. Due to strong vibrations, they were subject to rapid wear, in addition, vibrations led to the fact that small particles were knocked out of the surrounding soils in the well, which made the water cloudy and further increased pump wear. However, then centrifugal pumps were tried, which showed very good results, and as a result, they were accepted and used.
The use of separate pumps for each well greatly simplified the entire system. First, there was no need to deepen steam engines. Secondly, there was no need to build an underground gallery with many branches to wells:
Thirdly, it became possible to spread the wells over a greater distance, because now they needed to pull only electrical wires and pressure pipes at a shallow depth, which was much easier than maintaining a single suction system.
As the groundwater level dropped, a new row of wells was drilled to a greater depth and larger diameter than the first ones. Notice that in the engineering document of those years, the term "holes" is quite mentioned, instead of holes, and in another place they are cutely called "holes" :)
A wooden frame was installed above each well, in which a motor was located that set the pump in motion lowered into the well.
The pumps were powered by an overhead line:
Several log cabins have survived to this day:
However, electricity was needed to power the pumps. Of course, in those years, there was no talk of any electrification in Mytishchi, so a separate power plant building was built at the station. Parodinams were installed there, which used steam from the same boilers as steam engines. The power plant today
And here is what Zimin wrote about the device of the power plant:
It is very interesting to read the terms of those times: "rolling beam", "50 periods in one second", "distribution board", etc. In earlier documents, I met the term "fire engines", in relation to steam engines. Years will pass and modern terms, GOSTs and standards will appear, but then it was like this.
Steam engines are considered separately and in all details. As I said above, they were located in the machine rooms. The steam part of the machine was at ground level, while the pumping station was located in a special shaft under the building.
The flywheel diameter was 6 meters.
And this is how the cars looked in reality:
Steampunk :)
The new machine building (however, almost identical to the old one) has survived to this day:
Geppener Maxim Karlovich became the architect of most of the structures of the third Mytishchi water pipeline, he was also the architect of many other industrial and not only buildings in Moscow.
On the brick you can see the brand:
But the steam engines inside the building, alas, were not preserved. However, it's still interesting!
In the central part of the now almost empty hall, you can see a round opening:
Looking there you can find a metal spiral ladder:
And going down - to get into the underground mine under the building, where the pumping part of the steam engine used to be located. Unfortunately, it has not been preserved either, and now the ladder is perhaps the most beautiful element of the room :)
This ladder is already more than a hundred years old and it is mentioned in Zimin's book:
The process of selecting and testing a steam engine deserves special mention. At that time, many factories offered their cars and there was plenty to choose from:
After the machine was installed, it was tested and the performance parameters were carefully measured:
As a result of all the work carried out, the required performance was achieved:
It turned out at the cost of lowering the groundwater level by almost 12 meters.
This map shows the plan of the station at the end of the second phase of work. L-shaped buildings are mirrored - this is a new and old machine building. The building just below between them is an electric station. Two circles on the left are oil tanks. From above, two rows of wells are visible - the lower one is old, disconnected, the upper one is new.
Modern view of machine buildings and power plant:
A new chimney was also built and a road was laid to the station:
In addition to technical terms that are funny by modern standards, the document impresses with the number of various units of measurement and their combinations. Here are feet and pounds and sazhens and poods and inches and arshins and vershoks and meters with millimeters and atmospheres, but what are vershoks, there are even inches of mercury!
It follows from the document that different works were performed by different contractors, apparently they used different units of measurement, which did not lead to one standard.
New steam engines were not destined to work for a long time. In 1924, universal electrification reached the station. Steam engines, boilers, local power plant and oil tanks - all this has lost its relevance. Instead of steam engines, two electric pumps were installed, each providing a capacity of 2,100,000 buckets per day. At the same time, the most beautiful electrical panel was installed at the station, which has survived to this day:
Alas, now it is not customary to make any visual excesses in utilitarian buildings, but then it was the norm:
Probably the original ammeter:
Most of the instruments, of course, have long been replaced by relatively modern ones, although the marble and wooden base of the shield remains:
Glass ceilings over the shaft, where part of the steam engine once was:
In the same room, another interesting artifact has been preserved - a vacuum pump with an electric drive manufactured by Siemens.
Installed in 1920 to remove air from the suction line of the connecting well.
Alekseevskaya water station
The first version of the Alekseevskaya water pump was built in the 20s of the 19th century. The fact is that the brick gallery built under Catherine was self-flowing, from which its obvious drawback followed - it had to go with a constant downward slope. Before the then village of Alekseevsky, the gallery went almost in a straight line along the current Yaroslavl Highway. However, then, to get to the city center, she had to make a big detour through Sokolniki. But even this hook was only a partial solution to the problem, since in Sokolniki the gallery had to be built at a depth of about 18 meters, which even by today's standards is a very decent depth for laying communications. The same section became the most problematic - in 1823 the gallery collapsed and they did not begin to restore it. Instead, a water pump was installed in Alekseevsky with two steam engines with a capacity of 24 hp each, and a cast-iron pressure pipe was already laid in a straight line from the pump to the city center.
During the construction of the third Mytishchi water pipeline, the pumping station was completely rebuilt. More powerful steam engines were installed there and a water tank was built, which is a backup (spare) in case the water supply from Mytishchi is interrupted for some reason.
New water pump plan:
Photo of the machine building at the time of construction:
A beautiful ground lobby was built near the underground reservoir:
Among other buildings, an administrative building was built, where the workers of the pumping station lived and worked.
The fate of the Mytishchi water pipeline
The final fate of the Mytishchi water pipeline was rather sad. After a sharp rise, an almost equally sharp fall followed. And the reason for this was several factors. Moscow continued to grow at a frantic pace, a centralized sewage system appeared in the city. This led to the fact that even the increased productivity of the station was not enough to supply the city with water. At its peak, the station produced about 4,200,000 buckets of water per day, or converting into modern units - about 350 thousand cubic meters of water per day. By modern standards, this is a very small amount - now Moscow consumes about 4 million cubic meters of water per day. In addition, the desire to pump more and more water from the ground has led to the fact that the quality of the water has dropped dramatically. It became cloudy, sediment began to be deposited in the pipes.
By the end of the 19th century, it became clear that it would simply not be possible to feed a growing city only from underground sources. Experiments were made to drill new wells in different areas, but they did not provide the required amount of quality water, even in the first approximation. As a result, it was decided to build surface treatment stations, i.e. river waters. The first such station was Rublevskaya, launched in 1902. And in the 30s, a huge hydraulic system was built from many rivers, reservoirs, locks and pumping stations to supply Moscow with water - the Volga water came to the city through the Moscow Canal.
As for the Mytishchi water pipeline, it stopped supplying water to Moscow in the middle of the 20th century. Now the Mytishchi station provides water only to Mytishchi and its environs, while water is supplied to the station through pipes from Moscow, turning 180 degrees. From the ancient water intake basins, only pits remained, and the area around the station is now very swampy due to the rise in the level of the Yauza River "thanks" to the enterprise downstream.
Nikolai Petrovich Zimin died in 1909, a year after the publication of the book cited many times above.
Many thanks to the press service of JSC Mosvodokanal for organizing an excursion to the Mytishchi waterworks and the Alekseevskaya water pumping station.
All materials are obtained from open sources.
My other articles about sewerage and plumbing:
● Moscow Central Sewage Pumping Station
● Internet through sewers
● Country channel
● Cleaning and inspection of sewer pipes
● Kuryanovsk treatment facilities
● Lyubertsy wastewater treatment plant - how Moscow's wastewater is treated and odors are controlled
● Rublevskaya water treatment plant
● Rublevsky waterworks and water intake station
● Western water treatment plant
● South-Western Waterworks of Moscow
● History of the Moscow water pipeline
Until the second half of the 18th century, Muscovites took water from numerous rivers, ponds and wells, but as the population grew, water became scarce. Moreover, all waste products, alas, littered the sources and they became "nasty". The water quality was terrible. After the plague of 1771, the issue of the city's water supply became particularly acute, and on July 28, 1779, Catherine II instructed "Lieutenant-General Bauer to carry out water work for the benefit of our patronal city of Moscow."
1. At the behest of the Empress, military engineer Friedrich Wilhelm Bauer in 1778 developed a plan for the creation of the first Moscow water pipeline. According to the original project, 28 key basins were created in Mytishchi to collect groundwater, Gerard added 15 more to them. The water collected in the Mytishchi springs passed through the Thunder Spring and went by gravity to the city along a brick gallery 3 feet wide (almost a meter), up to a spring 4.5 feet (1.4 m) high and 19 miles long (more than 20 km) and descended in the Samotetsky pond.
Due to the Russo-Turkish war, construction dragged on for 26 years and was completed only in 1805, but due to design errors, already in 1826-1835, the Catherine's water pipeline had to be reconstructed. In construction and four!!! reconstruction for 100 years were invested huge amounts of money, but the water went to Moscow. The construction budget amounted to 1 million 700 thousand rubles. It is debatable whether it was Mytishchi water or groundwater that entered the Mytishchi water supply system, but one way or another it is considered the first Moscow water supply system.
All this is a story, it is simply impossible to tell everything in one post, it is on the network. I will show only a small part of those artifacts that can still be seen.
2. Sergey Yartsev became our guide. Thanks to his story, I learned a lot about the Mytishchi gravity water supply system, and heard a point of view that differed from the official one. We started from the Alekseevskaya pumping station behind the Krestovskaya Zastava. During the first reconstruction in 1826, the Mytishchi sources were rebuilt, the gallery was repaired, and a water-lifting station was erected in the village of Alekseevsky, equipping it with two 24-horsepower steam pumps. From it, water was supplied through a cast-iron conduit to a specially constructed reservoir of the Sukharev Tower. From the reservoir of the Sukharev tower, water was distributed through cast-iron pipes to five water-folding fountains: on Lubyanskaya and Teatralnaya squares, Voskresensky, Varvarsky and a fountain opposite the Sheremetev hospital.
3. The Alekseevskaya pumping station functioned until 1940, after the start of operation of the Eastern Water Pumping Station, repair shops of the Moscow Water Pipeline were located in its building. Some of the historical buildings of the Alekseevskaya water-lifting station can be viewed through a fence with cast-iron gratings along Novoalekseevskaya Street.
4. The plant "Vodopribor" is located on the territory of the station, producing water meters, heat meters and valves. In 2012, the main facilities of the plant were transferred to the Kaluga region, but the plant's territory is still inaccessible.
5. By order of the Department of Cultural Heritage of the City of Moscow dated September 16, 2016 No. 707, the Alekseevskaya pumping station and a number of other buildings are included in the unified state register of cultural heritage objects (monuments of history and culture) of the peoples of the Russian Federation as an object of cultural heritage of regional significance.
7. Well, how not to look with a lens into a territory that is closed from the eyes of strangers. Sadly, everything is cluttered and abandoned. :(
9. The Rostokinsky aqueduct, 356 meters long with abutments up to 15 meters high, is the only surviving section of the Mytishchi water conduit built under Catherine II, except for the brick gallery hidden from view. The Rostokinsky aqueduct is also called the Million Bridge, because a huge amount of money was spent on its construction.
10. In the mid-2000s, the aqueduct was restored, equipped with railings, a decorative roof and opened for pedestrian passage.
11. The Yauza River from the Rostokinsky aqueduct.
12. Really beautiful building. Back in 1785, Catherine called it the best building in Moscow, "that it looks as light as a feather and very durable."
13. Pedestrian bridge across the Yauza, 100 meters from the aqueduct. Then we move to Mytishchi near Moscow. What for? Let's look further.
14. In Mytishchi themselves, unfortunately, there is nothing left, and since the excursion along the Mytishchi water pipeline was organized by the Moscow Brewing Company, we went to visit them.
15. That water, which seemed the most delicious to Catherine II in the 18th century, is used in the production of beer at the MPK, which extracts water from 3 aquifers. These days, even the best water needs pre-treatment. Its properties are strictly standardized by TI 10-5031536-73-10 "Technological instruction for water treatment for the production of beer and soft drinks". The properties of the water involved in the brewing process affect the pH of the mash, wort and beer, which affects the course of enzymatic processes and, ultimately, the taste and stability of the beer.
16. In the preparation of light beers, soft water is mainly used (a water softening process is used). To make dark beer, harder water is used so that the hops give a coarser bitterness and the color of the wort is darker. Alkaline water is completely unsuitable for brewing; water with a slightly acidic or neutral reaction is used.
When brewing beer - as opposed to making soft drinks - the water must contain calcium salts. The presence of magnesium salts is undesirable, as they give a bitter aftertaste to beer. Also, excess sodium is not needed in water, which gives the beer a sour-salty taste. It is obligatory to remove iron from the water, which coarsens the taste of beer. An excess of sulfates contributes to the bitter and dry taste of beer, and an excess of chlorides slows down the process of its production.
17. Water quality is checked in the company's laboratory before each brew. And after brewing, the same laboratory checks the quality of the beer. But that is another story.
18. I have already written about the production of the Moscow Brewing Company more than once. Therefore, I will not dwell on this, but quickly run through the workshops of the enterprise. I will show only what did not fall into the old posts.
19. Last year, the brewhouse was expanded and 5 more brewers were installed. I have not seen them yet, so they are here :).
20. Rack for the personal hygiene of the brewer.
21. Beer filtration shop. Trap filtration after kieselguhr filter. The system allows not to use a filter press, in which filtration is carried out in a closed housing with minimal loss of carbon dioxide and prevents the contact of beer with air, preserving all the taste of the drink.
22. Here is the finished product. In Taiwan, many hotels have three taps: hot water, cold water and hot spring water. Well, in Moscow, thermal water could be replaced with beer. Is there anyone against?
23. Well, a few photos from the bottling shop. In previous posts, it is somehow poorly presented to me, especially the PET line (Polyethylene terephthalate), popularly known as "buckets" :).
24. Applying labels.
26. An aluminum can and Faxe beer are on the line.
28. That's it. It remains only to try the "Mytishchi water". Thanks to the organizers
What impresses: In 2004, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the opening of the water pipeline, a monument to Mytishchi water appeared on Mira Street. This peculiar bouquet of valves is visible even from a bird's eye view. Muscovites are already accustomed to the fact that Mytishchi springs should be thanked for clean water. But history preserves completely different facts: the Mytishchi water supply provided little water, and its quality left much to be desired ... So what's the matter?
It all started in the summer of 1778, when F.V. Baur, by order of the Empress, went on a business trip. He faced a difficult task: to find in the vicinity of Moscow a source of water for the "messy capital".
After examining many cities and villages, Baur fell into despair: there was no suitable source. But then the experts told him to go to the northeast. There, at a distance of a verst from the old Troitsky tract, in a pine forest to a height of more than three meters, a real fountain beat from under the ground. The measurement showed that the Thunder Key can produce 1 million 656 thousand liters per day or 69 thousand liters per hour of the purest spring water!
But for a thirsty Moscow, this was not enough. Then Baur ordered to drill test wells near the Thunder Key, and fountains of the purest spring water also gushed out of them. According to Baur's calculations, the Thunder Spring and 17 artificial wells could provide the capital with 300-330 thousand 12-liter buckets of water per day. Just as much as needed!
But the joy of the find was short-lived, because the estimated cost of building a water pipe was frightening: from the center of Moscow to water-bearing sources, at least 20 miles along the Troitskaya road, while the terrain is constantly rising, which means that you will have to lead the route in a roundabout way. In order to assess the entire “scale of the disaster” and draw up a detailed construction estimate, Baur walked the entire route of the future water pipeline literally up and down.
Baur's project was approved, and on July 28, 1779, 1 million 100 thousand rubles were allocated for the construction of the water pipeline. Construction has begun. First of all, they decided to equip the Thunder Key - they surrounded the source with a stone and built a log hut over it. From it, along the modern Vodoprovodnaya Alley Street, the first meters of a brick gallery were laid. N.M. Karamzin, who decided to travel around Russia before writing the History of the Russian State, wrote: I walked to the glorious wells there, through a long planted alley, from where water was brought to Moscow. There are 42 of them. Each one looks like a small house from a distance, and all together they seem like a small beautiful village. At the same time, at the time of Karamzin, a brick chapel stood above the Thunder Key. It was she who became the first monument to the engineers and builders of the Moscow-Mytishchi water pipeline.
And the Rostokinsky aqueduct can be called a posthumous monument to Baur, since the 52-year-old engineer died by the start of construction in 1783. Construction had been going on for 4 years, and in 1787 Empress Catherine wished to personally inspect the aqueduct. By her arrival, a trial run of the water conduit was planned on the segment from Gromovoi Klyuch to the village of Alekseevsky. The arched "water bridge" lined with white stone was presented to the Empress by Colonel Ivan Karlovich Gerard, who replaced Baur as the head of the construction of the water supply system. His son directly supervised the completion of the aqueduct. Father and son carefully prepared for the visit of the empress: in the village of Alekseevsky a table was laid, in the center of which a huge samovar puffed, and before the eyes of the astonished empress, Mytishchi water flowed from the newly built section of the brick gallery, which was filled with a pot-bellied samovar. “Tea drinking in Alekseevsky” Ekaterina liked, and she wrote in her diary: The best building in Moscow is undoubtedly the Rostokinsky water supply system, it looks as light as a feather.
But everything was not so smooth. The Russian-Turkish war delayed the completion of the construction of the water pipeline for almost a decade. And this delay was like death, because the role of pipes in the brick gallery was performed by ordinary planed boards. According to Baur's calculations, constantly flowing water should have prevented the destruction of pipes. But he did not take into account one thing - the suspension of work for an indefinite period, so typical for Russia.
In 1788, the third section of the brick gallery remained unfinished - from Sokolniki to Samotechny Pond. The builders returned here again only after 9 years. 400 thousand rubles were allocated for the completion of the water pipeline. But after 5 years, the head of construction, I.K. Gerard requested another 200,000 to complete the work. As a result, this last section became the most expensive of the entire 26-kilometer water pipeline, including even the famous "million bridge".
And now let's return to the already built water supply route, which simply collapsed for almost 19 years. It is possible that most of the boards and bricks that have not yet rotted out of it went to sheds in villages and villages from Bolshiye Mytishchi to Alekseevsky. But since Gerard understood his delicate situation (they would have asked him for the fact that they had not seen behind the already built route), on paper the entire water supply route looked quite serviceable. At the same time, Gerard drove numerous inspection commissions to the exemplary Rostokinsky aqueduct. In 1799, they even replaced completely decayed boards with sheets of lead. But this, of course, did not save the situation ...
And in the fall of 1804, the Mytishchi water pipeline was put into operation. On October 28, water from the Mytishchi springs set off along the brick gallery. At the other end, at the Samotechny Pond, on the same day, 330,000 buckets of the purest spring water were waiting for the arrival ... But then an incident happened that was worthy of being listed in school arithmetic textbooks. Given: in Mytishchi, 330,000 buckets of excellent quality spring water were poured into the brick gallery every 24 hours. But at the exit in Moscow, only 40 thousand buckets of muddy, swamp-smelling water poured out of this gallery. Attention to the question: where did the Mytishchi water go? They did not look into this, and as a result, for almost a quarter of a century, Muscovites drank 40,000 buckets of poor quality tap water every day, while undeservedly scolding the Mytishchi springs.
And only those who made foot pilgrimages to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and along the way stopped to rest in the village of Bolshie Mytishchi knew the truth. It was they who saw the true Mytishchi water. And she was admired and even considered healing. Perhaps that is why a memorial plaque was installed in the chapel above the spring: According to folk legend, the Key of this pool, produced by a thunderclap, was the first to give the idea to build this beneficial building for Moscow.
In 1805, it became clear that the construction, which lasted a quarter of a century, which absorbed 1,700,000 rubles of state money, by no means solved the problem of supplying Moscow with drinking water. 40,000 buckets of water per day at that time is a little more than one liter for every Muscovite. But no particular action was taken. The truth was revealed in 1823, when a brick gallery collapsed near the village of Alekseevsky. Catastrophe? Not at all! The same 40 thousand buckets of water continued to flow along the Sokolnicheskaya Line to the Samotechny Pond. This water, which for a long time was considered Mytishchi, got into the gallery from the springs of the Sokolnicheskaya grove, and was also ordinary groundwater (that is, melt and rain), which fell into the water supply system in those places where the gallery passed underground. And 330 thousand buckets of Mytishchi water dissolved without a trace on the segment from Bolshiye Mytishchi to Sokolniki.
In the summer of 1826, Emperor Nicholas I ordered the head of the Moscow District of Communications, Nikolai Yanish, to draw up a project for the reconstruction of the Moscow water supply system and allocated 565 thousand rubles for this. After 2 years the project was ready. Its authors were the director of the Moscow water pipeline Maksimov and a young lieutenant Andrey Delvig. It was decided to leave the Sokolnicheskaya Line as a separate water pipeline, and also to build a new brick gallery from the village of Alekseevsky along the modern Mira Avenue to the Sukharev Tower. From now on, this ancient fortress tower of the Earthen City of Moscow was to become a water tower. Also, on the other side, a brick gallery, built by the engineer Gerard, approached the Sukharev Tower. But here's the problem: in the area of the modern Prospekt Mira metro station, the water supply route rested on the rather high Poklonnaya Gora, and the water had to be supplied to Moscow by gravity. Then the gallery was laid inside Poklonnaya Gora at a depth of 17 meters.
And in 1835 the renewed Mytishchi water pipeline was put into operation. True, instead of the planned 330 thousand, not everything reached the Sukharev Tower from Mytishchi again - only 180 thousand buckets of water per day. At that time, the Baurov Brick Gallery was not only worn out physically, but also morally outdated. And "patching holes" no longer helped.
And by 1848, the volume of water coming from Mytishchi to Moscow was reduced to 100 thousand fans per day. It turned out that out of 48 Mytishchi springs, five completely stopped producing water, and the water content of Gromovy Klyuch significantly decreased. This was the last straw, after which it was decided to look for new sources of water. After 2 years, the construction of the Moskvoretsky water pipeline began. True, the water from the Moscow River was much inferior in quality to the Mytishchi.
In 1853, Andrey Ivanovich Delvig became the director of the water pipeline. He once again examined the Mytishchi springs and came to the conclusion that Moscow did not significantly get water from them. According to Delvig's calculations, in the upper reaches of the Yauza it was possible to receive 500,000 buckets per day if the level of the fence was lowered by one meter. And cast-iron pipes ran along the new route from Mytishchi to Moscow. Instead of Sharapovo - Perlovka. The Rostokinsky aqueduct also remained aside, and instead, next to the line of the modern Yaroslavl railway, an openwork metal bridge was thrown over the Yauza River, along which two cast-iron pipes were laid. Further along the modern Mytishchi streets, in the area of the platforms Malenkovskaya and Moscow-3rd water canal, it approached the Alekseevskaya water pumping station and from there it went along the old line to the Sukharev tower. And on November 1, 1858, the first 505 thousand buckets of Mytishchi water came to Moscow, which was distributed through pipes from the Samotechny Pond to the main squares of the city. Finally, the dream of Empress Catherine the Great came true: That every poor person should find a well of bright healthy water near his house. And at the very beginning of Semashko Street in Mytishchi, a catchment pond is still preserved. This is perhaps the only surviving hydraulic structure of the Delvigovsky water supply system.
It is known that on the day when the 50th anniversary of Baron Delvig's service at the Moscow-Mytishchi water pipeline was celebrated, he was presented with a silver bucket made by the famous Russian jeweler Ovchinnikov. The inscription was engraved on the silver in Old Russian script: “To the deeply respected Supplier of Moscow with healthy water, Andrei Ivanovich, Baron Delvig from Moskvich. 1880". This Muscovite was none other than the Moscow Mayor Nikolai Aleksandrovich Alekseev.
In the second half of the 19th century, water again became sorely lacking, and in 1870 the question of reorganizing the Moscow water supply again arose. Then Nikolai Petrovich Zimin calculated that up to 3.5 million buckets of water per day could be obtained from Mytishchi. The project of the new water pipeline was prepared by the engineers Shukhov, Knorre and Lembke. They suggested lowering the water intake level to a depth of 30 meters and shortening the water canal route from Mytishchi to Moscow. A cast-iron water conduit was laid along the Yaroslavl Highway through the modern village of Druzhba, the village of Malyye Mytishchi, the villages of Rostokino and Alekseevskoye - to the Sukharev Tower in Moscow. And in the autumn of 1896, 1.5 million buckets of Mytishchi water came to Moscow.
But even this was not enough. After 4 years, a new modernization was required, after which the maximum supply of water volume in the history of the Moscow-Mytishchi water pipeline was expected: 3.5 million buckets per day. In order to raise to the surface such an amount of water from the already heavily dehydrated Mytishchi subsoil, at the suggestion of N.P. Zimin, they used the so-called "Brooklyn system", that is, 50 drainage wells in the upper reaches of the Yauza were connected by one common pipe. Powerful pumps in a specially built machine building from a depth of 10 to 30 meters literally “sucked out” all the moisture not only from natural underground reservoirs, but also from the soil surrounding the drainage wells.
What is the result? The volume of water supplied has increased, but its quality has fallen dramatically. After 7 years, reducing the consumption of Mytishchi water became a necessary measure. By that time, technology already allowed for the purification of water from large rivers, and the city authorities thought hard about a new water supply.
In 1904, a hundred years after the commissioning of the Mytishchi water pipeline, another Moscow water supply came to its aid, the water to which came from the village of Rublevo. A slow but steady decline in the volume of Mytishchi water pumping continued until the beginning of the 21st century, until it froze at around 10 thousand cubic meters (slightly more than 833 thousand buckets per day). But all the same, that same legendary purest Mytishchi water remained only history.
Rostokinsky aqueductLet's start with a couple of legends.
Legend 1 about the Thunder Key. Allegedly, during a terrible thunderstorm in the second half of the 18th century, lightning struck the ground and hammered a 3-meter-high water fountain from this place. It happened not far from the place where the remains of the village of Bolshiye Mytishchi are now located. And since lightning is accompanied by thunder, this key was called Thunder. Maybe because Lightning is somehow not in Russian. And it seems that even scientists have confirmed that lightning, indeed, could break through a layer of clay that holds water, and I know that water "attracts" heavenly electricity, still doubts do not leave me. The terrain there is flat, there are no ravines, and I don’t understand how a fountain 3 meters high could learn. Well, okay, they are legends and legends, so that it is beautiful. There is a key, there is water.
Legend 2. Once Catherine II went to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. And she wanted to drink. And the peasants brought her some delicious Mytishchi water. And she liked this water so much that she ordered to build a water supply system to supply Moscow with delicious Mytishchi water. There are questions here too. Our tsars-emperors did not eat or drink in roadside eateries, as they were afraid that they would be poisoned, and they carried drinking water with them. But in our case, according to the traditional Russian slovenliness, the barrel of water fell behind somewhere, and the Empress must be given water in order to avoid anger. And so the brand "Mytishchinskaya Voda" appeared. Well, the local people began to do their own small business on this brand - to give thirsty water and tea to drink.
Much has been done to maintain this very brand. Up to the point that the city administration ordered Perov a painting on the theme "Tea drinking in Mytishchi"
It is possible that the tea kings of Perlova also fussed here - good advertising!
2. And the coat of arms of Mytishchi is dedicated to water and plumbing. 
Well, now from the legends I propose to go directly to the water supply.
So, the first water supply system was built by decree of Catherine II in 1779-1804 and named Catherine's in her honor. The water supply was fed from 43 key pools and was a brick gallery 22 miles long. Water flowed by gravity to the drainage basin on Trubnaya Square with a branch to the Kuznetsky Bridge. The design capacity was 300 thousand buckets per day, in fact 40 thousand buckets reached the end. They didn’t know how to make metal pipes at that time, there were no industrial waterproofing materials either, so a large amount of water was simply filtered through the brickwork. The height difference along the length of the water pipeline was only 44 meters, i.e. 2 meters per mile. The task of maintaining a uniform slope despite the fact that we had to cross natural barriers was very difficult. This problem was solved by military engineer Friedrich Bauer, and after his death - engineer Ivan Gerard. Most of the workers in the building were soldiers. When the Russian-Turkish war began, the soldiers were sent to the front and the construction was slowed down.
Very few fragments of the gallery remain. Already in recent times, during the expansion of the Moscow Ring Road, the crossing over the Ichka was destroyed, during the reconstruction of the Yaroslavl Highway, a fragment of the gallery in the area of the bridge over the Yauza, a section in Mytishchi during the reconstruction of the heating main.
3. Scheme of the upper part of the first thread. 
The road to the Thunder Key, from which it all began, was shown to me, but the paths in the forest were not yet dry, and I had to postpone his visit until later.
4. But we managed to see the bridge over the drainage channel. 
It looks like an ordinary bridge over a ditch. An asphalt road passes along it, cars drive. And if you do not know what is down there, then you will not pay attention to it. Which, in fact, I have done many times.
5. And below - the masonry of 1779. 
In my opinion, the masonry was renovated in later times. But, nevertheless, the quality of the brick allows this bridge to stand for more than 200 years.
6. At the top you can see a kind of icicles. 
But, in fact, these are real stalactites, only small ones.
7. And this is a drainage channel. 
8. Drainage basin No. 12, or rather its remains. It is on the diagram. 
9. And best of all, of course, that part of the water supply that passed through the Rostokinsky aqueduct was preserved. 
Construction began under Catherine II, finished under Paul I, and under Nicholas I, a serious reconstruction was already required. That's just Alexander I did not put his imperial hand. Come on. it is excusable for him - he fought with Napoleon, he had no time for plumbing.
So - the weakest point turned out to be in Sokolniki - there the gallery passed underground and water from the swamp seeped into the water supply system, which seriously worsened the quality of Mytishchi water.
10. In Sokolniki, I saw only this swamp. 
Moreover, the gallery in the Sokolniki - Krasnoye Selo area collapsed altogether, cutting off the water supply.
In this regard, it was decided to build a water-lifting station with two steam engines in the village of Alekseevsky.
11. This is just not far from the aqueduct. 
And from Alekseevsky, water conduits have already been laid to the Kremlin, the Orphanage, baths, and the theater. By the way, the surviving fountain near the Bolshoi Theater is part of the same water distribution system. Other fountains were located on the Lubyanka, Sukharevka, Varvarka, Nikolskaya, Alexander Gardens. And there was only one left - at the Bolshoi.
But even this was not enough for Moscow, and clean water was needed, because plague and cholera felt very good in dirty water. And under Alexander II, they started another reconstruction.
The capacity of the pumps in Alekseevsky was increased, and cast-iron pipes were laid from Mytishchi to Moscow. Water was supplied to the pipes by pumps; for this, two steam engines were installed in Mytishchi.
12. If you leave the gate of the water pumping station and go straight, you can see the traces of the former direct road to Mytishchi. 
Most likely, the second thread went exactly in this place.
The road went under water when the water level in the Yauza was raised in the 1970s and a vast wetland complex was formed. This was done to flood the peat workings and apparently after the hot summer of 1972. Then, as in 2010, peat bogs burned throughout the center of the country.
It is said that one can still walk along this road in waders, but since then it has been heavily overgrown, and wading through the bushes is below average pleasure. Wikimapia lists this place as an old road.
13. In 1890-1900, a new water supply line was built, and it went along a different route. From the station she was taken to the west, and she crossed the Yauza at the place from which the survey was conducted. 
The new water supply already consisted of cast-iron pipes with a diameter of 600 mm. Water was supplied to it under pressure created by pumps driven by steam engines.
14. In Moscow, the end point was two water towers on Krestovskaya Square - at the very beginning of the Yaroslavl Highway. (Photo from Wikipedia) 
From these towers, water flowed by gravity to consumers. The productivity of the water supply system was already 1.5 million buckets per day for each of the two pipes. The authors of the project are Zimin, Zabaev, Dunker.
15. This is the bridge, called Cast Iron. 
When in 1937 the canal was built to them. Moscow and the Eastern Water Canal, (
) the problem with supplying Moscow with water was solved and the Mytishchi water pipeline lost its significance. The Krestovsky towers were dismantled in 1939 during the expansion of the Yaroslavl highway.
In the next, final part of the story, we go to the preserved water pumping station, the main buildings of which were built by the same architect who built the Krestovsky towers - Maxim Karlovich Geppener.
Part 1.
Part 2. Water pipes.
Part 3. Waterworks.
