What you see in the first picture are the opposite sides of a fiber glass water tank being pressed together, separated only by a 50mm PVC pipe and a float switch. They were originally about a meter apart but now they are being crushed together. The tank has imploded. A fiber glass water thank isn’t all that easy to crush. If you roll it on to it’s side and stand on it you will only make a small dent that springs back the moment you step off. It takes a truely massive force to do this and that force was generated by water itself. No not water inside the tank but outside!

This fiber glass tank is an underground water storage tank. It  was placed in a concrete enclosure. Ground water or rain water had gradually crept into the enclosure. That in itself is not a problem as long as pressure inside the tank is equal to the pressure outside. Water from this tank is pumped into an overhead tank the process being automated with float switches. When that happens fresh water flows into the tank from the Municipal supply albeit at a lower rate than the outflow. As a result a pressure difference builds up and the tank shrinks a little bit The process continues until the pipes are damaged and the system stops working. That’s when you discover that something has gone wrong

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