Dog restrooms are increasingly being added as an amenity to apartment buildings. Rooftop locations however pose an exceptional risk, particularly where cast-iron drainage piping is installed (required in many areas). Urine is corrosive to cast-iron and will leak through into penthouse unit ceilings.

The extent that public spaces are essentially giant dog latrines is really unfortunate.

A plumbing engineer friend and colleague in Detroit just dug this up for me, which contains some information on the ‘Detroit single stack’. This is a single stack configuration but prohibits WC connections.

Social housing has led to some incredible innovations in the past. Watch this space!

folks! 'Seattle Council unanimously approved ILA between City of Seattle & Seattle Social Housing, which will transfer approx. $115 million in funds this year to acquire & build permanently affordable & publicly owned housing for hundreds of working Seattleites.' wilson.seattle.gov/2026/02/11/m...

February but over 50°F (10°C) and sunny in Vancouver. 😌

Update

There’s a method for remotely tracking disease spread without ever accessing a site. Sewage contains troves of information and a water sample collected from a city owned manhole downstream of a building or neighborhood can be analyzed to determine levels of bacteria, viruses, and pharmaceuticals. 🧵

inadequate food inadequate ventilation inadequate privacy inadequate restrooms they are warehousing people in inhumane conditions

European cities became what they are today by doing the inverse of this. “OUR city isn’t [insert name of American sprawling suburb here].” *proceeds to rip up pavement and put trees, beautiful apartment buildings, cafes on quiet streets, protected bike lanes and 15 minute cities everywhere*

Milan Winter Olympics kicked off on a stage shaped like a giant centrifugal pump, the primary pump type used for pressurizing water systems today. The centrifugal pump was invented by Italian engineer Francesco di Giorgio Martini in 1475.

The 2 inch shower drain requirement is staggeringly excessive and the NYC Plumbing Code goes out of the way to deviate from the adopted model code to maintain this traditional requirement.

Headed back to the UK for the World Plumbing Conference in June!

My clothes washing machine sings me this (characteristic feature of Samsung models)

American sanitation practices are primarily based on striking the British with shame, even if we end up looking like weirdos in process

Very comprehensive Vox article on building code research and reform efforts across the country, fearing John Zeanah’s report for the Center for Building on low-rise multifamily housing and Michael Eriksen’s academic work on building code costs www.vox.com/future-perfe... (gift link)

Immigrants are good, actually. Instead of terrorizing them, we should—as a nation of immigrants—welcome them and aspire to be more like them.

Spent some time this afternoon with the spotted towhees

Despite these being labeled as ‘detention centers’ or ‘prisons’, there is no way to easily convert these buildings to meet any basic level of sanitation for this many people without grave human rights abuses. The infrastructure isn’t there and the site selection suggests there’s no plan to add it.

This looks like something from a single stair opponent’s fever dream.

The price of copper is up 54% in just two years. Even back in 2021, I had a developer for a +250 unit building ask me to switch the design specs to stainless steel piping instead of copper due to the cost.

At least two Portland-based architects are closing their offices to support the general strike tomorrow against ICE.

While Europeans are stunned when they discover that an extensive network of vent piping is still required in most of North America, Norwegians having been scoffing at the rest of Europe for using a 4 inch (100 mm) single stack instead of a 3 inch (80 mm) for nearly a century.

Next new pseudoscientific medical grift: cesspool healing spas

This reminds me that I need to do a thread on embassies as building code exclaves.

The CSA would simply pass away at the mere sight of the Royal Danish Airforce.

Bathroom pods recently used in an EcoCocon housing project in Copenhagen

Plumbing for multistory residential represents a sizable percentage of the overall construction cost while often being fairly repetitive. Prefabricated systems, like the here from the 1950 Int’l Plumbing Congress proceedings, have been explored but never seemed to gain widespread adoption.

After struggling for several minutes, this seagull finally managed to swallow the starfish whole, but now has a massive starfish-shaped neck bulge. 🥲

A gas explosion near the top of a high-rise NYCHA building killed one person and injured 14, one critically, in the South Bronx this morning. I would love to see the Dept of Bldgs reform our codes and standards to make it way easier to get gas out of these old buildings nypost.com/2026/01/24/u...

Boston cops tremble at the sight of this

We need a GeoGuessr for plumbing

TP and other sanitary products are also the primary factor influencing flow performance/blockages. Bidets reduce the volume of products entering the drain, so I see pathways for bidets to pay for themselves with simpler drainage systems in new construction with plumbing code reform.

I just woke up from a nap and somehow while I was asleep, everyone on the trolly has figured out we are not going on the right track

Your regular reminder that there have been no nationally mandated changes to the maximum faucet or shower flow rates. These are regulated by state plumbing codes. This is just vice signaling for people who hate water.

Probiotics for plumbing - some of the interesting research taking place at Eawag in Switzerland to address Legionella growth in building water supply systems.

“For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of the South, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.” MLK, 1967

This is wild.

When the sip doesn’t hit

I really wish we would do something like this again, except instead of prefabrication, focusing on experimenting with concepts not currently in the building codes or applying building codes used in other parts of the world with support from int’l peers and a review committee.

Operation Breakthrough, a HUD project in the 1960s, produced some significant advances in prefabricated building construction methods and also exposed the need for building code reform.

Future headline: Denmark and NATO stunned as two Chinese aircraft carriers arrive in Nuuk at request of Greenland following a series of US-involved strikes near Thule Air Base.

One position is motivated by advancing common prosperity and the other is fueled by a sociopathic drive for exclusion.

Google search’s AI overview is promoting unsubstantiated claims from the regime on conditions in the interment camps.

It’s just wild that we’re so normalized to ripping walls apart to replace shower/bathtub valves in North America.

Very rarely in the building codes/ standards world will you see a map with this stark of a contrast.

So these new restrooms won't need water or sewage connections. I wonder if they're going to be like the Throne Labs set up that Caltrain's been adding recently.

I’m guessing the plan is use existing mass-produced portable restrooms, common at construction sites and temporary event spaces.

Here’s the impact of negative pressure on the water seal of a trap. Air is being pulled from the indoor air side of the trap into the drainage system.

Denmark also has some of the highest Legionnaires’ disease cases in Europe, a disease with the primary source of infection being domestic hot water systems and cooling towers in buildings.