The first to fall in the war on fun

Trending growth in animal consumption is one of the biggest threats to water resources and the nutrient cycle.

As Pride Month draws to a close, I would like to remind everyone to keep their Pride Pumps for their domestic hot water circulation systems running. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

New construction in London yet no air conditioning or solar protection. The UK housing stock is nowhere close to ready for the current climate.

This was a really cool and unexpected surprise to close out the conference with!

CO2 levels are consistently much better in the London underground than LNER/Avanti trains. This seems to be a consistent issue with HSR trains. Fuxing trains are the best that I’ve observed so far but still not great).

The urbanism of Birmingham

Some high-tech WCs coming our way. 👀

Generally not a fan of PSAs, but watching people at Wegman’s in Brooklyn fill up on bottled water makes me wonder: does the average New Yorker know that we have some of the best tap water in the country? Kind of an affordability problem if they don’t! You don’t have to spend $600/year on water!

Let’s put this into policy since voters didn’t like the last referendum: Switzerland must hit or exceed a population of 10 million by 2030

It's actually really cool and heartening to see the myriad ways we keep coming up with to more efficiently use resources. Like rather than going "oh my gods, we've been wasting the shower heat down the drain" I'm sitting here like "woah that's so cool, we figured out how to use the shower heat"

Belgium here. EA type backflow prevention is required to be installed *after* the meter. Everything before meter is water company property. A 10 family building is not different than 10 houses.

Here’s a look at what’s used to protect municipal water supply services to buildings in much of Europe (Type EA in EN 1717). Unlike an RPZ (ASSE Standard 1013) which is required even for small apartment buildings in much of the US, these have a very low pressure drop.

American heat pump water heater manufacturers that use older refrigerants like A. O. Smith have enjoyed widespread popularity in China. I suspect the ASHRAE delay with R290, while beneficial to domestic manufacturers in the short term, could spell doom in the long term.

I’m in Birmingham for the World Plumbing Conference, held in conjunction with the InstallerSHOW.

Irony is dead.

This building would be illegal to build today in the UK.

Blockage on the horizontal below as it's dropping the wrong way.

If you’ve ever wondered why drainage piping is mounted on the exterior in some parts of the world, this is why.👇 This practice was enshrined in the 1877 UK Model Bylaws since pipe connections were not always reliable due to methods and materials used at the time. No excuse here with modern piping.

Great Britain has definitely lost the right to identity as a “cold wet island”.

No floor penetrations needed for this shower. All above the floor, including the WC. 👍

If you’ve ever wondered why water quality controls can be so much smaller than water quantity controls (and honestly, who hasn’t), when that means only a small fraction of the rainwater is getting treated—this is why!

it's official: these new bathrooms in pdx airport represent the peak of human accomplishment. individual, private rooms. no gaps. a shared sink and waiting area. light, bright, pleasant. accessible. the toilet gold standard. we did it folks

New blog post on the CfB website from yours truly, discussing our four story single-stair proposal that will be in the 2027 IBC. Encourage anyone interested in single-stair to take a look, even if your city/state has already passed it!

Soy is a protein/nutrient dense bean and will be incorporated into the Woke 2.0 agenda under the Ministry of Animal Welfare and Ministry of Water Resources.

It still baffles me how few individuals working within the AEC industry participate in the code development process. If you can’t commit to being on committees, you can still submit proposals and public comments on proposals! The technical committees are literally forced to review it and vote on it.

The reflecting pool needs to stay the way it is. It’s a giant public display of the phosphorus levels in the Tidal Basin (the fountain source) and how well the Clean Water Act is working (which was gutted last year). This dead-zone inducing contaminant is getting sent into the Chesapeake Bay.

This feels like a better option for handicap accessible restrooms. Far more flexibility in terms of layout with these drop down arms compared to the fixed 18” from the wall ADA setup. And a lot easier for a retrofit situation vs tearing out concrete, running new waste lines.

I was expecting a performance of Luciano Berio’s Sequenza V for trombone but it turned out to just be an escalator in need of some maintenance.

Oh no…this is a disaster. Reducing the diameter of the stack vent and the using the vent as the gutter drain? Residents in this building may smell sewer gases inside when someone flushes a WC during a heavy storm.

I love plumbing Bluesky. This is a seemingly small rule that will impose a huge cost on small apartment buildings that would be characteristic of Inner Eastside for All.

This post makes me think if we were serious about building housing, we would have top to bottom regulatory reform efforts. Back flow preventer for residential use makes no sense, so much to unlearn.

This feels like another aspect of the "apartments are pollution" theme. Renters are the same thing as a factory or auto body shop or whatever as far as regulations are concerned.

The superblock by night.

A typical water service in Germany only requires a check valve, which has negligible pressure loss. That means a building in the US will require a booster pump system for a building 3 stories shorter than in Germany due to this requirement alone.

Single stair in a typical Barcelona tenement or casa de veïns (Catalan for ‘house of neighbors’) from 1894.

TIL there are Gaudi Truthers with prophetic details on what the completion of La Sagrada will summon.

Since the topping out ceremony is today, you should be aware that the storm drainage systems of La Sagrada Família rely on a series of snail gargoyles which serve as downspout nozzles.

Having worked in a building where the transformer exploded in the basement, I’d feel a lot safer if a utility were encouraging these to be placed in the sidewalk rather than inside the building with me.

100 years ago, the first international plumbing congress was held in Paris. This was a first effort to standardize plumbing regulations and product manufacturing. Standardization around the 2 inch (50 mm) water seal for traps was one outcome, which effectively established a uniform pressure limit.

A copper piping trade organization posted a video on LinkedIn showing different piping materials on fire inside a wall cavity. PEX melting during a concealed wall cavity blaze is actually a plus, as this comment points out, but the video was of course shot with empty pipes.

The RPZ is the highest hazard mechanical backflow valve manufactured and also requires annual inspection. The presumption that an apartment building poses a danger on par with a chemical injection system is essentially a de facto booster pump requirement for apartments above 4 stories.

Haven’t shared this in a while, but just added a few people to my building codes, standards, and technology starter pack go.bsky.app/KgW22UZ

This is the life the NIMBYs want to withhold from you.

If I mention the single stack to an American plumbing designer, they’ll most likely think I’m referring to the Sovent (left) or this unsavory “concession edition” of the single stack (right) that quite literally is two stacks along with a stack vent running the height of the building.

Why would someone go out of their way to install a 90° bend on a stack vent? Ideally the stack vent wouldn’t slorp gusts of wind into the drainage stack, especially where sewer intercepting traps are installed!

Single-stack is the new single-stair, a lot of people are saying it.

i gave a talk on single stair yesterday and everyone kept noting how clean the european ceilings in photos i showered were. single stack, better codes, and point access blocks are a big part of why!

Vent cowls are common in a lot of the world but very much not a thing for sanitary vent terminations in the US and Canada, which just terminate as an open pipe to the air. Sanitary drainage systems without these are at the mercy of the neighborhood squirrels. 🛁🥜🐿️

Take a look around at the ceiling and notice the exposed sanitary drainage piping. All of these winding segments are a reflection of the strict adherence to venting orthodoxy in North American plumbing codes and serve no actual function except making blockages more likely to occur.