A Brief History of Pipes and Plumbing

Welcome back to another month of our blog! In today’s blog we are going to discuss pipes! We all see them around the house, especially when we look under our sinks. We thought we’d learn about the history of pipes in construction and plumbing specifically. The inventions that came along because of pipes and innovations that have made pipes better as well as safer over time.

Pipes have been around for a long time. The first men made pipes out of clay and straw, while the Egyptians are credited for making the first ever copper pipes around 2500 BC. The Roman Empire improved on many designs, these included aqueducts to get water around the large cities as well as inventing fountains to decorate their busy streets. This all happened around 500 to 312 BC. So when you watch movies like ‘Gladiator’ know plumbing was around in those times!

It was going to be quite some time until mankind got creative. We had the pipes and were able to get water from point A to point B, but we were still going to the bathroom in large holes. That is until 1596 when the first toilet was invented in England, and in good time, too. Disease and plagues had ravaged the English island and being able to manage waste better after using the bathroom allowed for more hygienic surroundings. However, we finally got tired of lugging around hot water to take baths in and 214 years later the first working shower came along in 1810. It was also around this time many large European cities in both Europe and the United States began running pipe systems for use at home. Talking about the USA…

Still then there was much room for improvement. As technology slowly evolved and man was limited to the inventions of his time we now skip across the pond to the good old U. S. of A. where in 1855, the sprawling city of Chicago implemented the first city wide sewer system! One thing to note, sewers had been around before then, but never organized and treated like it was here. Before then, sewers would guide waste toward bodies of water to be washed away and forgotten… except the use of local rivers to do this resulted in cholera epidemics that killed thousands. Aren’t you glad we got our stuff together?

The more modern ceramic toilets with workable flushing capabilities didn’t come around until 1870 in England, where only middle class and upper income families were able to afford to have them in their homes. Fast forward almost 60 years later! In 1928 the first plumbing code was published and called the “Hoover Code” after the man that pushed the code into existence, Herbert Hoover.

America is now a booming economic power, but with growth comes growing pains, and with those come innovation once again! Pipes had been made of copper for as long as they had been around. In 1952, the first plastic and PVC piping was introduced in the United States. These came in handy a decade later in 1962 when shortage of copper forced us to start building more and more with plastic pipes, which to this day are used and incorporated in most above ground plumbing. 

As new inventions come along in the world of plumbing we here at Metro-Flow Plumbing jump at the chance to be ahead of the game. You might’ve heard us mention our cured-in-place pipe system technology. This state of the art trenchless pipe repair system allows us to repair your old pipes running under your home and yard without having to do any pesky excavation. 

We hope you enjoyed going through a bit of the very rich history of plumbing. We look forward to revisiting this topic sometime down the road, so we can learn some more together! Until next time Dallas, stay safe and have a great September!

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