Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Laying a wooden water pipeline east of Lewsiton, Idaho, circa 1891. Supposedly some of these lasted a hundred years.

 


12 comments:

  1. and unlike the old Bell System, craftsmen don't appear to be outnumbered by white-capped 1st-2nd level managers!

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  2. When I first started selling wholesale plumbing in the `70's, wood stave x pvc adapters were a common item requested. I was told as long as White Pine stave wood pipe, stayed wet it would never rot. It was only during construction projects where it was torn out, that it had to be replaced.
    Frick, Im old....

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  3. Wooden water mains don't burst when the water in them freezes.
    They just swell, then reseal when the ice melts

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  4. Coopers making a looooong barrel! Being a cooper is still viable trade.

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  5. NYC had them thirty years ago or so.

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  6. The EPA allowed lead pipes to be used even after they were banned in1986.

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  7. The lead pipe issue was mitigated by the lead/copper rule, which specified that the treated water must deposit a thin calcium carbonate coating, thus reducing the lead and copper corrosion.

    Nontheless, it would be a good idea to replace all the old lead house connections, which were standard everywhere until 1986, but still the overwhelming majority of house connections are lead.

    The Flint, Michigan, disaster occurred because the City Council diverted funds allocated for lead mitigation to other pet projects. No Council Member was punished.

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  8. Lewiston, Idaho is named after Lewis of Lewis & Clark. Clarkston, Washington is just across the Snake River bridge. A little-known fact is that Lewiston is officially a seaport, with barge traffic hauling grain from northern Idaho and Montana all the way down the Snake River to the Columbia River and on to Portland, Oregon. Salmon migrating downstream as young smolts are captured at the top-most dam and given a boat ride (in a barge) down to the ocean because there are so many dams on the Columbia.

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  9. Wooden barrels are used to store all kind of useful liquids. Like wine, beer, and whiskey.

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  10. Back in the 80’s I worked on a farm that had a spring plumbed to a water tank through “pump logs”. They were about six inches in diameter and drilled from both ends and then fitted end to end . This was in the Catskills of N.Y. State.

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  11. Hello. - Canada here. - More years ago than l care to remember, my now deceased friend Jürgen and l visited an old convent somewhere in northern Germany. lt had centuries-old square wooden pipes for supplying the convent with water. One was partly exposed , so you could see water flowing through it. Still intact and fine after all those years . . . The wood must remain wet, is all; it is the going back and forth from wet to dry that will rot the wood.

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