iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 5h

This building was built in 2016 with post-tension concrete and will be a nightmare adding holes in the slab for the new plumbing. Before core drilling for 5"/6" pipe sleeves, they'll have to x-ray the concrete to identify where the holes can be drilled through the floor to miss the rebar/tendons.

Image of PT slab before concrete is poured

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 13h

I just learned from a German engineer that the Messeturm tower in Frankfurt, the 3rd tallest building in the EU, was built with single stack drainage configurations in every bathroom serving all 63 floors. The stack diameters are 8-inches and all vent piping is eliminated except at the top floor.

en.wikipedia.org

Messeturm - Wikipedia

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 14h

It sounds like everyone aboard the flight from the UAE was saved because someone broke into the cockpit. I wonder how things would have turned out if the plane had this new bespoke US safety requirement?

m.youtube.com

New cockpit barriers close a 9/11 security gap

YouTube video by CNN

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This tracks with the project workload trends I saw at the consulting engineering firm I was at. Very profitable and abundant work and I saw my colleagues and junior engineers, who had previously done a lot of multifamily work, switch over to data center work.

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Whimsical yet slightly unsettling.

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This climate resilience technology requires no electrical connections or batteries and pairs well with heat pumps.

Cloud in a blue sky with shutters closed and open along the building facade

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Michael Andersen @andersem.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I have a confession to make. The townhomes I & others spent most of a decade trying to legalize are popping up all over Oregon & elsewhere...and I love that...but they're a problem in one big way. (get ready for a twisty thread about the housing report @sightline.org just published)

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Despite the US embargo and humanitarian crisis, Cuba has been providing medical aid to Venezuela (invaded by US in January) following the earthquakes in June.

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It’s hard to overstate how massive of a security issue this is to everyone in the building. They only caught them because they were exiting? 🤦🏻‍♂️

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A more important quote in the text here is that trap venting requirements were “founded on misconception and perpetuated by ignorance, prejudice and humbug”. This is what I told the ICC PMG CAC in my single stack proposal earlier this month (more or less).

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

One argument against trap venting requirements in the 19th century was the tendency to increase evaporation rates of water seals. Boston architect J. Pickering Putnam, a single stack proponent, vividly described evaporation as a thirsty monster that will “lick the water seal out of our traps”. 👹👅💧

Excerpt from Plumbing and Household Sanitation from 1911:
More than half of this complication is due to the absolutely and at all times worse than useless so-called "back vent" system, a system founded on misconception and perpetuated by ig-norance, prejudice and humbug. Indeed, so far as the science of plumbing is concerned, this system is already a back number, for the leading authorities in plumbing and sanitary engineering have placed themselves squarely in opposition to it.
Of course it will be useless to study the various plumbing fixtures of a house and the proper methods of connecting them up with the piping until we know what that piping is to be, and accordingly our first duty is to tackle this
"back vent" monster and destroy it, for being a thirsty creature, it will, if left on guard over us, be certain in time to lick the water seal out of our traps, or else, by gorging

Excerpt from Plumbing and Household Sanitation from 1911:

itself with grease, to lose all consciousness and abandon the trap seal altogether to its enemies.
Like the cholera germ, this most pernicious infliction cannot stand light. The science of hydraulics and pneumatics is fatal to it and shall form for it our club of extermination.
The Hydraulics and Pneumatics of Plumbing.
The agencies which tend to destroy the water seal of traps are siphonage, evaporation, back pressure, capillary action, leakage and accumulation of sediment.

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The urge of European hotels to install zero threshold showers and pair them with a bottle trap and never clean them. 🥲

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

No, this WC won’t start gurgling after you flush it if it doesn’t have a vent! This attempt shown here to comply with the NYC Plumbing Code instead created a new code violation: connecting below the centerline of the drain (905.3). This vent is liable to accumulate TP and block the entire drain.

m.youtube.com

Friday’s Peanut Budget #plumbinglife #nyc

YouTube video by HydroNYC

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I recently came across a pair of 11 story buildings each 633 ft/193 m long in a small city outside of Barcelona. They’re part of a larger development that’s basically Spain’s Pruitt-Igoe and they will soon face a similar fate.

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This may be the most accessible below-floor drainage piping I’ve ever seen, asides from maybe old tenements with floor boards.

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This requirement was put in place in 1881 as part of an effort to prohibit the use of lead piping (before plastic existed), but as with many requirements in building codes, the justifications shifted over time - newer and better materials became prevalent in the mid-20th century and nothing changed.

point near the front of the house. This trap must be furnished with a hand-hole for convenience in cleaning, the cover of which must be properly fitted and made gas and air tight with some proper cement.
15. There must be an inlet for fresh air entering the drain just inside the trap, of at least four inches in diameter, leading to the outer air and opening at or near the street curb, or at a convenient place not less than four feet from the nearest window.
No cold-air box for a furnace shall be so placed that it can by any possibility draw air from this inlet-pipe. The inlet-pipe should never be carried up to the roof inside or outside the house.
I6. No brick, sheet-metal, earthenware, or chimney-flue shall be used as a sewer-
ventilator, nor to ventilate any trap, drain, soil, or waste pipe.
17. Every vertical soil-pipe and waste-pipe must be of iron, and where it receives the discharge of fixtures on two or more floors it must be extended at least two feet above the highest part of the roof or coping, of undiminished size, with a return-bend or cow!. It must not open near a window, nor an air-shaft which ventilates living-rooms.
I8. Soil, waste, and vent pipes in an extension must be extended above the roof of the main building, when otherwise they would open within twenty feet of the windows of the main house or the adjoining house.
19. Horizontal soil and waste pipes are prohibited.
20. The minimum diameter of soil-pipe permitted is four inches. A vertical

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Freshly minted TKE spotted. 👀

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It’s always either entrails or chemtrails with this guy.

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This can also be really useful for setting a precedent for code changes! 👇

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I used to do a lot of work in San Jose and once proposed an AMMR for a single stack for only floor drains (no other fixtures) in a 16 story residential building and the chief plunbing inspector said absolutely not. In the end, the building was never built due to cost-overruns during permitting. 🙃

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This would be a big deal for both Canada and the EU because Canada’s economy is about 20% larger than Spain, which is the 4th largest economy in the EU.

Tables of countries by GDP from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Noise ordinances are one of those very obvious and necessary things in urban environments. It’s also incredibly funny watching cops shushing grown men.

Sign reading “No loudspeakers at the beach. Fines of up to €3000 for anti-social behaviour.”

Shhh face on sign on a pedestrian street with €3000 fine

Sign asking people to be quiet with microphone above it

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Code changes like the single stack have very clear and significant benefits but the burden of proof is usually put on parties that don’t have the financial incentive to go through the effort. If the single stack were a proprietary product and not a concept, it would be used in every state already.

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Darren McLean @darrenmcleanuk.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

When you ask is they’re ok, and they reply “More or less”

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I witnessed a fire today in an abandoned building and they dispatched the largest fire truck I’ve seen in Barcelona (yes, still small).

Photo of fire truck turning down a street

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Inside of this will be a series of nitrification columns and struvite precipitators with pumps and pipes running into the lagoon below, circulating and cleaning the water to end the chronic eutrophication on the island, all funded by the Bureau of Environmental Services of course.

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William Skudlarek @willskud.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

It’s been fun seeing this chart I made take a life of its own. This was originally just a tracker spreadsheet I made after @stephenjacobsmith.com and @pipedreaming.bsky.social asked me to look into the various US plumbing codes and what piping/tubing they permitted.

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Daniel Koslovsky @dtkoslovsky.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

My next article in the @acitythatworks.bsky.social building code series is up, doing a deep dive on the plumbing code. Come to learn about the one weird trick the city could use to shave 5% off construction costs, stay to learn about the 19th century joint coupling method the city still mandates!

citythatworks.substack.com

Let’s fix the plumbing code

Lead and oakum joints belong in museums

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Mo Zhu @moinmybackyard.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Here's the background on the proposal. Basically a single stack of pipe (used all over the world) going up the building rather than two stacks currently required in the US. www.iccsafe.org/building-saf... aspe.org/pipeline/an-...

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Mo Zhu @moinmybackyard.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

We are at 3PM Chicago time, which means it's time for the PMG CAC to hear proposals from interested parties. This segment will feature a major pro-housing supply plumbing proposal from @pipedreaming.bsky.social. Following it live.

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William Skudlarek @willskud.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

In case you questioned John’s commitment to plumbing reform, this is his local time right now, before he’s even started his presentation:

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Going live shortly. 📡 📺 We me luck!

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Stephen Jacob Smith @stephenjacobsmith.com · 10/09/2026

Some time between 3 and 5 pm CT, @pipedreaming.bsky.social will present on single-stack venting to the ICC’s PMGCAC. For a link (which will likely go to spam), register here. I will *try* to alert people here when it’s on, but you need to register now events.teams.microsoft.com/event/96ff2e...

events.teams.microsoft.com

Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The US and Canada by auxiliary were using toilets into the mid-1990 that were so inferior and inefficient with water that utilities in the UK had banned them literally 90 years earlier.

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Currently listening to a discussion at the ICC Code Action Committee meeting about Airbnb pools being used for swimming with livestock (in North Carolina?) “Swim with the pigs” is what’s being advertised. Not clear how they are addressing this in the Int’l Pool and Spa Code.

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Stephen Jacob Smith @stephenjacobsmith.com · 09/09/2026

That’s cool. I’m in a hotel airport in Chicago and am going to watch @pipedreaming.bsky.social try to convince a committee in a few days that the sanitary drainage designs they use in Germany won’t make bathrooms smell like poop.

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

For those unaware, Carney shooting this with the backdrop of light-frame wood construction is the equivalent of making a divorce announcement to a soon-to-be-ex with the kids to the side.

m.youtube.com

Forward Guidance: A Stronger Canada

YouTube video by Mark Carney

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I think I’ve just found one of the most blatant examples of appropriation of American rural culture.

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

As water stress worsens in Spain, police go around and check water meters supplying the world’s most water guzzling industry. Spain grows 25% of Europe’s fresh produce.

m.youtube.com

How greed is turning Spain into a desert

YouTube video by DW Planet A

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Mike Eliason @holz-bau.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

the way america builds multifamily housing is a global anomaly and results in low quality apartments offering a poorer quality of life - that are also absurdly expensive

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

@musicologyduck.bsky.social’s forbidden bidet appears to be sewer back pressure due to a blockage in a combined storm sewer system. Plumbing codes require a backwater valve where lowest fixture in the building is below the nearest upstream manhole (i.e. overflow) but these are often missed.

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Michael Druker 🇨🇦 @mdruker.app · 04/09/2026

Fixing our ability — regulatory, institutional, cultural— to build housing and infrastructure is so crucial for Canada, so that we can get out of zero sum politics

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

All wrong. It’s pronounced “hose bibb”.

Survey question 33

“Do you use "spigot" or "spicket" to refer to a faucet or tap that water comes out of?”

spicket
spigot
I use both interchangeably
I say "spicket" but spell it "spigot"
I use both with different meanings
I don't use either version of this word
other

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

It’s basically Pokemon Go, but for elevators. 🛗

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

12% strongly support having a coal power plant next door while 17% strongly oppose having a solar farm nearby.

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