We also use a volume measurement (cubic feet) moving over a time period (generally, seconds, or daily) to determine how much water passes a certain point during the particular point in time.  Think of this certain point, as say, the outlet side of a pump, or the water entering a tank, or even, the water flowing through your water meter.  All of these are rates of flow, and are based upon a moving volume of water.  And, keep in mind that a flow rate is just a "picture in time" of what is happening right then.  You don't have to run the water for a minute to achieve that flow rate, just as you don't have to drive for an hour to achieve the speed limit.

So, what does go into getting you water?  As an example, if you have 1/20 of a gallon of water that flows through your water meter in 1 second, you have a flow rate of .034 cfs.  That may not mean much to you, but to us, your water provider, that is important ... especially when you take into account that you are 1 of 30,000 customers, and all of a sudden, we have a combined flow rate within our entire distribution system of 334 cfs (all in 1 second).  That's (334*7.48)=2498 gallons in 1 second that we've had to deliver to our customer accounts in our service area.  That may sound like a lot, but it really isn't ... the current average flow rate within the Clifton Water District right now is .23 gallons per minute, or about .0006 cfs.  When we talk about this average flow rate, keep in mind that it is a true average of what is used in an average household in a 24 hour period.  Most households won't use much at 3:00 in the morning or 2:00 in the afternoon, because people are actually sleeping, or working.  However, there may be quiet a bit of use at 7:00 in the morning, or 8:00 in the evening.  If 1/2 of the households take a shower in the morning, and then 1/2 take one around 8:30 in the evening, the flow rates in a typical household running a shower or bath or outside faucet will be in the neighborhood of 20 gallons per minute.  If 1,000 people through out the district are running a shower,  watering their lawns, washing a load of dishes, or doing a load of cloths at the same time, that is 20,000 gallons a minute that we have to deliver to just those 1,000 customers, not to mention any other use by the other 29,000 potential customers.  What are the chances that a restaurant or business isn't running some water right then?  When you start adding all these numbers up, for all the customers of the distribution system, they tend to get rather large, rather quickly.  Then, you throw in infrequent uses such as fire flows (water used through fire hydrants to fight a fire, at a flow rate of 1,000 or more gallons per minute), industrial and commercial uses which are generally 10x or more than what an average family uses, and leaks and breaks in the distribution system itself, and there's a lot of water moving somewhere all the time.

What used to take hydraulic engineers months and months to design and test, utilities now use specialized computer software that takes all of the known elements of your distribution system, calculates all the known water uses (through actual billing amounts ... not just averages any longer), and then allows management to ask "what if" questions with regard to the water delivery system.  What if one area of the District grows at a faster rate than the rest, will the existing system maintain it's integrity?  Can a particular distribution line accept another subdivision tap?  At what point will a new tap effect the current customers on it?  What will a connection to another distribution line do to the flow rates on both systems?  What about a fire?  Who's services will be affected?  How long could a fire be fought before it affected another area in the distribution system?  We here at Clifton Water utilize just such software.  It allows us to identify problems long before we actually experience them.  It allows us to make informed decisions based upon what we know, and what we project based upon known water uses in an area, and historic growth patterns.

To give you a better feel of what Clifton Water is looking at, we have a plant that is rated to a flow rate of 12 million gallons per day (remember, it is a rate ... we can operate at that level for only a portion of the day), current tank storage in excess of 5 million gallons, and we're still looking at a major plant expansion within the next 5 years to keep up with the growth in the Clifton / Whitewater areas.  

The following table gives you some water facts and conversions that may be of interest: