Restoring the 150-year-old ‘Mulji Jetha Pyau ‘or ‘Flora Fountain’, the iconic heritage structure at Hutatma Chowk in the Fort area of Mumbai, to its former glory required study of copious amounts of historical background. The fountain which once drew water from the now-underground well, is restored and it should be open to the public soon. Knowing its intricate water engineering system, however, was a months-long affair for the team working on the project.
Interestingly, the mystery of water network was revealed only when conservation architect Vikar Dilawari and his team of structural engineers chanced upon a seven feet and six inches deep chamber at the centre of the fountain that had been sealed off, possibly more than half a century ago.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) decided to restore the sculpted structure after it stopped functioning a couple of years back and the project was allotted to Dilawari and his team in June last year. Before the work could begin, Dilawari had to conduct a detailed investigation of the fountain to understand why the water had stopped flowing. It took at least two months to diagnose the problem before they were able to start the actual repair work on the structure.
They first removed the layers of waterproofing found on the pipes. As they probed further, the chamber that was responsible for the regulation of water pressure for the fountain. According to their observations, people who were maintaining the fountain had done a patchwork rather than rectify the problem and gradually, the water stopped flowing out of all the outlets placed at the fish’s mouths.
Accompanied by his teammate and structural engineer, Kiran Bhavsar and members of Burjoor Fryamjee Plumbers, who are among the city’s oldest plumbing firms, Dilawari tried all non-invasive methods to determine the problem. “The problem was that when the water went up, it would start leaking. We wanted to try endoscopy but it was expensive and would increase the project cost. While we were studying the structure, we found three protruding pipes that were choked. After cleaning them, we inserted a tape down the pipe to measure the depth which is when we realised that the cavity was more than seven feet deep. We then sent small digital cameras down the pipe and spotted the valve mechanism inside,” he said to Indian Express.
During the investigation, the team also tried other methods, like thermography that didn’t yield any conclusive result. Dilawari added that the existence of the valve had never been documented and after making inquiries, civic officials said they did not have the key to operate the valve. The manual chamber had been concretised and judging by the contents found inside, the cavity was sealed more than 50 years ago. They removed the concrete and found the access to the chamber which contained four valves.
After the chamber was discovered, Dilawari and his team cleaned the area and placed two support beams. According to Dilwari, two people can easily fit inside the chamber. The key to the door will remain with the civic body so that when there is a problem in future, technicians will be able to access the valves easily. They also repaired the water system at the upper-level tray of the structure where another leak was spotted. Interestingly, the team found glass bottles, bottle openers, iron rods and cloth dating back to the early 1960s in the chamber.
(Source: www.freepressjournal.in)
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