Sydney was one of only eight cities world-wide to introduce this form of power. The Hydraulic Pumping Station is an example of Australian uptake of world-class engineering from England in the late 19th century, and remains a landmark in the history of technology here. With its large cylindrical accumulators, roof-top water tank and associated pieces of buried piping and valves scattered throughout the city, the building is part of the most comprehensive record of a public hydraulic power system in Australia.
While its classical façade offers a quaintly old-fashioned approach to the presentation of an industrial building, the place is a rare survivor of the extensive industrial infrastructure which once dominated Darling Harbour.
History of the Pumphouse
This is the traditional Country of the Gadigal, Aboriginal people who have lived here for at least a thousand generations.
The location of the Hydraulic Pumping Station was under water until the 1860s when this part of Darling Harbour was infilled by the NSW Government Railways. Darling Harbour had a railway line and it required more port-side land to service its industrial and maritime functions.
Sydney entrepreneurs formed the Sydney & Suburban Hydraulic Power Company during the roaring 1880s. First they lobbied the NSW Government for enabling legislation, then they built the pumping station in Pier Street, Darling Harbour. Opening in 1891, the station powered passenger and goods lifts, bank vault doors, wool presses, dockside cranes and other wharf machinery. In the days before electricity was readily available, clients could access this cheap and reliable energy by opening a valve into the city-wide system of underground high-pressure piping. At its peak, the company had about 80 kilometres of hydraulic piping throughout the CBD. It also had a holding dam in Moore Park so the station could draw its own water rather than reply on city mains. This map by Pumphouse engineer Tom Dickinson showed the early extent of its pressurised piping throughout Sydney in 1894.
The effect of making elevators more readily available was dramatic. Developers were quick to seize on the new technology and use it to meet mounting commercial pressures for more buildings on less land. Commercial, residential and warehouse buildings could be constructed up to eight storeys instead of the previous maximum of three or four storeys. Sydney's General Post Office, Queen Victoria Building and Dymocks were among the many buildings that relied on hydraulic power for their lifts. Already in 1891 the station was servicing 69 lifts, but this number grew steadily to 720 lifts by 1919. At its peak in the 1920s the Sydney public hydraulic power system was the third largest in the world (after London and Geneva).
As well as providing easy access to the upper levels for customers and workers, the Queen Victoria Building used their lifts to move horses which were hauling cart-fulls of vegetables to the basement-level food markets.
Sydney engineer Norman Selfe designed the elevators for the Hordern's Department store in the 1890s, then built this timber and metal model of the elevator to explain how it worked (now held by the Powerhouse Museum).
Providing hydraulic power was a profitable business until the 1970s, when the Hydraulic Pumping Station was finally rendered obsolete. The disused site was purchased by the Darling Harbour Authority in 1986, a decade after being decommissioned. By then, it had been heritage-listed by the National Trust and the NSW Heritage Council. Although leased and partly incorporated into the neighbouring hotel in 2000, these historic premises continue to be owned by NSW Government's Placemaking NSW.
How does hydraulic power work?
It is based on Pascal's Principle, named after Blaise Pascal, a brilliant 17th century French mathematician. Pascal understood that if you apply pressure to a fluid inside a closed container, that pressure spreads out equally in all directions, with potential for the original force to be multiplied. It took until 1795 for the English inventor Joseph Bramah to figure out how to use this principle in industry.
Bramah patented the hydraulic press, which is based on having two cylinders of different diameters with pistons. If a force is exerted on the smaller piston, this is translated into a larger force on the larger piston. Today, cars and trucks would not be safe without hydraulic brakes, which enable a small push of the foot to stop a fast-moving, heavy vehicle.
How did the Hydraulic Pumping Station work?
The station was a small, self-contained industrial complex. The Engine Room was designed with massive, load-bearing brick walls topped by iron girders capable of holding up the 465,000 litre Rooftop Water Tank. This tank weighed 465 tonnes when full and supplied a steady stream of un-pressurised water into the pumping engines below. Adjacent was the Boiler Room (now demolished), equipped with four large Lancashire steam boilers which burnt coal to power the pumping engines to force pressurised water into the two accumulators in another adjacent room. Each accumulator was a large, cast-iron cylinder enclosing a powerful piston. In the top part of the cylinder, above each piston, was some 100 tonnes of gravel and weights bearing down onto the water being forced by the pumping engines into the pressurised tank below.
The accumulators acted like giant hydraulic batteries—storing energy by lifting heavy weights, then releasing that stored force into the pressurised pipes whenever needed. When a customer opened a valve somewhere in Sydney, water would flow from one accumulator into the network. The piston’s weight pushing down on the water ensured it was being expelled at a constant pressure of 700–800 psi (4,800–5,400 kPa). Once the piston reached the bottom of its stroke, the steam-driven pumps were redirected to fill it again while the other accumulator took over supplying the pressurised water. This way, one accumulator was always in service while the other was filling. Similarly the entire system of pressurised piping throughout the city was duplicated so that if a leak developed anywhere, the water could still be delivered to customers through the alternative set of piping while the leak was being fixed.
Hydraulic power stations generated a relatively small force on the water within their accumulators, which was transferred though pressurised pipes and multiplied throughout the city to power all kinds of machinery.
References:
Don Godden, 1979. 'Heritage Significance of the Sydney & Suburban Hydraulic Power Company Building', report commissioned by Centrepac.
Charles Sturt University, c2010. HSC Engineering studies module on Hydraulic Power using the Hydraulic Pumping Station Darling Harbour as a case study, HSC online.
Dickinson, T., 1894. 'Hydraulic Power Supply in Sydney', Minutes of the Proceedings of the Engineering Association of NSW, Vol IX, 1894 (online on the State Library of NSW website).
Dictionary of Sydney.
Engineering Heritage Australia website.
Gibson, J.W. (Heritech Consulting). 2015 ‘Remnants of Hydraulic Power in Sydney, a collation of data relating to the remains of hydraulic power in Sydney in 2015’, report held by Heritage NSW library online.
Placemaking NSW archives.
State Heritage Register listing entry at: HMS - ViewItem
Sydney Heritage Consultants, 2018. 'Former Hydraulic Pumping Station No.1, SHR no.125, 17 Little Pier St Darling Harbour Conservation Management Plan', commissioned by Place Management NSW, endorsed by Heritage Council of NSW, 2018.
Wikipedia.
