Photos by Bruce Comfort : on the map, in Google Earth (KML)

This building is included under the tag "Wellington Harbour Board hydraulic network" and "The Borough Race", because it, like a few other Wellington premises (some small bakers,confectionery makers and butchers) and others like The Government Printing Office and the printing business of Henry Blundell (which became The Evening Post) were also water powered at one time or another and in the case of all the Wellington enterprises except the Harbour Board, that water power came from the town (public) water supply, as did similar installations for commercial and industrial purposes, in Oamaru, at about the same time.

As far as I can tell at this time (March 2012) Wellington and Oamaru were the only two cities that had a range of businesses with hydraulic power equipment run off their gravity fed, high pressure domestic (town) water supply networks.

This line drawing shows the working components of a Schmid reciprocating self-valved water motor. These motors were of Swiss design and few complete motors survive as the moving parts were all made from machined cast gunmetal and this material was in such great demand for munitions during the First World War that all such sources were "mined" and exploited. Patriotic churches on both sides of the conflict would have donated church bells for use by their respective British or German arsenals, although it has been said that in the British Commonwealth countries the Lutheran Churches had their bells confiscated!

What is not shown in the drawing is the trunion and the mechanism which held the oscillating cylinder down onto the semicircular shoe - a system of levers and adjustable screws which maintained enough pressure to keep the device moderately water tight whilst still allowing it to "rock" without absorbing too much energy. The machines did leak and all working engines will be mounted on a base which can collect the run-off and direct it to drain.

Here is an You Tube video of a similar water engine working

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyPTUKqkX9g

great

Inside Hor Dai Chun. Electricity, a couple of houses with telephones, no running water and no toilets (one toilet for the whole village)

The small building made from river stones was the house of our great great grandfather.

There are not many ways a whim can be configured and I guess that one made by any competent foundry and engineering shop would look like one from anyone else, but these do bear a close resemblance to whims from the Elswick works of Sir William Armstrong and considering that the hydraulic network was established as the business of Armstrong was peaking in Tyneside UK and that the Harbour Board purchased Armstrong hydraulic cranes from the UK in the early days (to be confirmed - as I haven't examined the Board files in archive) it may be that these are Armstrong whims. No marks were visible to me on my first inspection.

Shed 21 was a wool store and dump (a descriptive term for the place/facility where wool which had arrived in bales from farms at a modest density was re-packed to minimise shipping volume).

Most sheep farms had screw presses to squeeze the wool into tight bales, but the density was capable of being increased at least twice and often three times by pressing two or three bales together in a facility which had hydraulic machinery. These facilities were located at just a few export ports around New Zealand and Wellington was the collection and export point for nearly all the wool that was grown in the North Island from The Manawatu and The Wairarapa.

The building had travelling gantry cranes and was fully open to the roof (a three story high space) It is now in three floors and partitioned as apartments.

The faceted tower held one of the two hydraulic accumulators on the Harbour Board network. It is clear from what remains that the weights that were driven up by the hydraulic pumps went (traversed) the full three floors and that they (or it) filled the whole void of the tower, the guide rails are on opposite faces and wear on the guides extends to nearly floor level. The implication may be therefore that the hydraulic cylinder was sunk entirely below floor level (3 stories down) and that it may still be in place under the new concrete floor of the tower which has been converted to a stair well.

The logo comprises a Dolphin and Crown and an Anchor on a blue ground.. Heraldry buffs will have a "proper" way to describe these symbols!

The motto "Union is Strength" reflects the turbulent past of the Harbour Board I think - it grew out of necessity but it had a difficult passage!

The most comprehensive and beautiful book about Wellington Harbour is WELLINGTON HARBOUR by David Johnson ISBN 0 9583498 00 and this link http://www.wellington.govt.nz/services/heritage/pdfs/oldshorelinetrail.pdf will take you to an interesting 70 page guide to the harbour.

This building has the rope and whim hoisting apparatus seen in other pics under this tag. The building has an NZHPT (Historic Places Trust) Category 1 listing and it is really the most visually attractive and significant of the surviving WHB buildings on Wellington's waterfront. It is now (2012) the HQ for MOJO'S a coffee importing and cafe franchising business and under the guidance (one must presume) of Lambton Harbour Management and The Trust, Mojo's has converted the building by erecting another modern building inside it - freestanding and very elegant, without compromising the old building in any way. An example to other developers and heritage advocates of a good way to prosecute adaptive reuse.

The two whims that drive the hoisting system are on the walls just beside the big cart-dock doors effectively running up the back of the pillars with the bollards at the base.

Partially drained in 1992 (you can see the old water level in the difference in the vegetation on the exposed banks) because there were grounds to suspect that the concrete arch dam was not capable of withstanding a moderate earthquake, the Upper Karori Reservoir is part of the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary a large [225 Ha] urban bush area enclosed by a predator proof fence.

http://www.sanctuary.org.nz/

Built 1871-1872 this earth dam incorporated the very best practice. It had a puddled clay core for which a pug mill was imported and used, and it had no "breaches"

Following the experience of the failure of Bilbery Dam in the UK, this dam had no culvert through it at its base - not even a de-watering sediment scavenging pipe. The only breach is a high level sluice at its Eastern end - used in advance of predicted flood flows to drop the level. The spillway over the crest and the wave protection barrier are both concrete (normal practice was for the upstream facing (wave protection) to be rip-rap but Wellington city has no hard rock sources or quarries (still) the nearest then being at Horokiwi in the Hutt Valley. All of Wellington's accessible rock, including in the valley of the Kaiwharawhara Stream is deeply oxidised and weathered Greywake which is soft.

The valve tower access footbridge jets from the East embankment and not from the dam itself as would have been much more commonly seen.