The miraculous inventions and marvels of the plumbing system through time.
Running water. To drink, to stay clean and healthy, to remove our waste, we hardly give it a second thought and yet we will visit a bathroom as much as six or seven times a day. We never think how our plumbing system works as we brush our teeth, wash our hair or use the toilet and why would we, unless something goes wrong.
The modern plumbing system is extremely reliable and does more than just deliver the necessary ablutions. Stylish design and clever technology are making our kitchens and bathrooms state of the art and are helping us to build sustainably, but this has only been accomplished through a long history of plumbing triumphs and disasters. Let’s take a look at the innovations and refinements that have helped us arrive at the conveniences we enjoy today.
It is true that the very first houses to draw water from a well through conduits originated in the town of Mohenjo-Daro, in modern-day Pakistan. Wastewater was also sent away from the houses through covered drains that lined the main streets. Even the smallest houses were connected to the drainage system.
The Egyptians developed copper tools and pipes to create irrigation for their crops. This could help to prevent the Nile flooding their crops, as well as provide water in the low season.
It seems that the ancient Egyptians wanted to ensure that the dead enjoyed a good standard of living in the afterlife, with the discovery of a copper plumbing and drainage system in the remains of a 4500-year-old pyramid.
Ancient Crete, and people are keen to stay clean. Excavations have shown that those ancient engineers used the gradient of the land to create a drainage system in the Palace of Knossos. They had also fashioned a water closet with a seat and rudimentary flushing (1000 BC). Not only that, they built rainwater cisterns to keep drinking washing water for future use (1500 BC).
The first ancient showers were only created for royalty and thousands of years from what we would recognise as a shower. Our earliest record of a shower comes from 710 BC when slaves were directed to pour cold water over the head of King Sargon ll of Assyria so that he could bathe.
Yes, the Romans were smart. They not only developed an underground sewer system; they came up with public and private baths and made marble fixtures with gold and silver fittings - the very first designer bathrooms. To do this they build water systems which included aqueducts that transported water from the countryside to Rome. After the water passed through the aqueducts, it was stored and then distributed through tunnels of pipes to baths, fountains and toilets. Your average, well-to-do Roman had hot and cold water as well as a sewage system.
Disaster struck around 200 BC, when the Romans used lead piping to replace a former system. This did improve the way that water was carried into the city but then caused numerous deaths from lead poisoning. Did this increase in the mortality rate contribute to Rome’s downfall?
Sir John Harington having been banished from the court of Queen Elizabeth l for telling risqué stories went home and at some stage created the first flushing toilet. If the banishment was what led to invention, we will never know, but the Queen forgave him and ordered him to build her a ‘John’ at Richmond Palace.
Although quite drafty, castles in the 17-century had ‘toilets’, unfortunately the rudimentary plumbing system dumped everything in the moat.
In Versailles, nothing was going to stop King Louis XlV from building the most magnificent palace in all of France, certainly not a trifle such as having no surround water sources for his acres of garden. He ordered the construction of a cast-iron plumbing line to carry water from a pumping station about 15 miles from the palace fountain and surrounds. Voila!
In 1767, an English stove and heater manufacturer, William Feetham created the world first mechanical shower which some might say, defeated the object of getting clean. A person would stand in a large basin and an overhead tank would pump water up from the basin via a hand pump. The bather would then pull a chain to let the water ‘shower’ down and collect again in the basin below. A shower in rapidly cooling, soiled water? It was still easier to have a hot bath.
This was developed in New York after a number of fires had shown that the city needed an adequate and available supply of water to fight fires. The system was a new network of hollow logs which allowed the firefighters to drill a hole for water when needed and then plug it afterwards.
In Philadelphia, the Fairmont Water Works system replaced its inefficient steam engine system with a dam and water wheels across the Schuykill river, piping water directly to businesses and homes.
Passed in England, this model has become plumbing code and is followed almost all around the world. It outlined that some kind of sanitary arrangement was needed in every house, be it a flushing toilet, privy or an ash pit. This led pottery makers including, Wedgewood, Twyford and John Shanks to start inventions with all ceramic parts.
With the installation of circulation pipes between water-heating units and hot water storage tanks, the first water heaters made their way into private homes and smaller buildings.
Connecting a vent pipe to the drain at the trap outlet prevented odious odours and sewer gases from escaping at waste outlets.
This allowed engineers to calculate the flow in sloping drains.
This was the closest in history that we come, to the closed toilet water tank and bowl that most people use today.
Along with a Dr. Roy B Hunter, it was pre-presidential Herbert Hoover who was one of the fathers of modern standardised plumbing codes for builders and plumbers, commonly known as the ‘Hoover Code”.
The White House was plumbed in and received running water on the main floor with upstairs plumbing coming in later when President Franklin Pierce was in office.
PVC pipe began manufacture during the reconstruction of Germany and Japan following WWll and was in wide used for waste-vent-drain piping.
This act expanded and supported the national water supply in England and Wales and outlined water quality classifications and objectives for the first time. It also enabled local government to create byelaws for amongst other things, the conservation of water.
Galvanised iron piping was commonly used in the United States from the late 1800s to around 1960. After that copper pipe took over.
In America, the Energy Policy Act is passed to reduce water flow rates in plumbing fixtures with the aim of water and energy conservation.
Remote controlled toilets and whirlpools are already in use in bathrooms today and water treatment plants treat and cure wastewater making it safe for us to reuse. No doubt advances in plumbing will continue to develop as pressures grow to build more sustainably and efficienctly as time moves on.
Wherever that takes us, knowing what you know now, we should view what the previous few thousand years of plumbing innovation have brought us with a little more appreciation. Even if it’s just for a few seconds.
Now to the future…