In the city of Raleigh, North Carolina, at 3215 Wade Avenue, you will find this building that looks like a house. If you look a little closer you may notice there isn’t a driveway or mailbox.
As you approach the front you notice the windows are fake and there’s a huge vent right above the doorway.
A trip to the rear of the building reveals a large diesel fuel tank and a few warning signs…
A peek inside reveals the building’s true identity. It’s a water booster pump station that keeps ‘the water moving forward’ so it eventually reaches the homes and buildings in the surrounding area. The Water Booster Pump Station at 3215 Wade Avenue has three large pumps that help maintain water pressure. If utilized at maximum capacity the pumps here can keep water pushing forward at a rate of 45 million gallons per day. That’s equivalent to a single person taking a shower for 17 straight years!
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In the 5 minute video above (produced by Eric Mennel for North Carolina Public Radio), you can get a full tour of the ‘house’ on Wade Avenue. Since the pump station is located in a residential area beside a church, the city thought the presence of an industrial-looking building might be unsightly. Although this is the only pump station (out of 20) in Raleigh that is made to look like a house there are many similar buildings around the country which you can see in the gallery below.
Louisville, Kentucky
Manistique, Michigan
Janesville, Wisconsin
Tampa Bay, Florida
Oakland, California
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Electrical Station in Nashville, Tennessee
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