Water

[Gimli Son Of Gloin]

My mom forgot to pay the water bill and our water got turned off today smilies/rolleyes.gif (incidently the hottest day of the year so far)

In ME there is running water coming out of faucets in houses. Is there a water company? Do hobbits have to pay bills every month?

[Lothiriel Silmarien]

That's a really good question......ok, wait I think they get water from a nearest lake or river or something. That's how I would think it to be, but then what about when Bilbo gets a cup of tea for Gandlaf and the dwarves and Frodo does this too, but they go to the sink for that cuz there would be no other purpose for the sink......I'm confusing you too now, sorry! I think they would have running water but paying bills??? I don't know, maybe hobbits were too nice and didn't make the people pay for water.

[Birdland]

I imagine that hobbits got their water from wells, just like you see in old paintings, with the rope and bucket. Or perhaps they had invented the hand pump by then? Most houses would have had their own well, and if there was a public square in the town, this would probably have had a well, too.

Also they would have had rain barrels and underground cisterns to catch run-off from rain showers. The sink you see in Bilbo's kitchen was a "dry sink", I believe. It had a drain, but no pump. The water would have been carried from the well and heated in a kettle for washing up.

The Shire was a lush and green land, and I'm sure water was plentiful. But public water lines supplying houses would not have been an option, mainly because there would have been no way to pump the water through the pipes.

Which brings up the question: how did a huge city like Minas Tirith supply their people with water?

[Kalimac]

Minas Tirith could well have large public wells every few blocks or so; I believe quite a few medieval cities had these and while they were dreadful disease-spreaders they were also the best way to make sure that everyone got their share. To be honest I'm not sure how they worked, but they must have had at least a rudimentary idea of how pipes and aqueducts worked - the Romans knew. I picture the Minas Tirith natives as being at an approximately Roman level of technology - speaking as someone who has no knowledge of engineering, I'd still imagine that providing water for a city that's built on a hill would involve some use of pipes and aqueducts.