Turbine Hall Basement

The turbine hall basement at Wangi Power Station runs the full 228-metre length of the building, a concrete-floored level below the turbine hall floor above. The basement is set with structural columns in regular rows, supporting the bays of the turbine hall floor. Pipework runs along the underside of the upper floor in long parallel runs: feed-water mains, oil-return lines, drain headers, instrumentation tubing. Most of the larger steam and water pipework has been removed for salvage; the smaller-gauge instrument and control tubing is mostly still in place. The lighting is bare bulbs on a perimeter circuit. The floor shows the staining of decades of working spills, with the heaviest pattern under what would have been the turbine pedestals.

The basement was where the condenser systems, the boiler feedwater pumps, and the lubrication oil plant ran. Each of the six Parsons turbo-alternators above had its own condenser fitted into the basement directly underneath it. The basement plant supported continuous operation through the working life of Wangi from 1958 to the closure of B Station on 31 October 1986. Generating equipment was removed between 1995 and 1997. The condenser shells and the larger pumps came out then. What is in the basement now is structural and minor.