iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 34m

I can’t legally donate to Mitch anymore but I am now perpetually a District 4 voter as long as I’m living abroad.

360

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 52m

Is there a noticeable air pollution difference or are they cooking up something really funky?

000

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 19h

Yes, or even from Oakland (second best option). It’s just silly for the Bay Area to have three major airports.

120

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 20h

I remember doing site-walks during the construction of Silvery Towers (my first condo design job), which is perfectly aligned with the runway and it was wild standing on the roof when a commercial jet flew overhead. SJC literally could not be in a worse spot.

1160

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 20h

I thought it was lower as well. Did they increase the height limit?

010

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 20h

This is the map I’ve been looking for!

150

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 21h

How close is this to the FAA height limit? Looks pretty close.

110

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Some housing providers have a big lessons learned document that they provide or their own standards to the design team or will just ask for solutions to general issues they’ve had on past properties, but it’s all anecdotal.

130

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

An even higher cost is currently already being paid though with operational expenses. Many insurers will even cover the initial construction cost of leak detection systems, recognizing that it will reduce claims. Not a super specialized building, just one that addresses the big liabilities.

140

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

These are small mostly unnoticeable modifications which is good for avoiding stigmatization - it’s just good design. This unfortunately isn’t standardized in any way though so this is left to individual design teams to champion or housing operators to request for future construction

150

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A standard 5-over-1 is not great for all demographics without special considerations or modifications and ignoring this regularly leads to a lot of property damage, driving up insurance premiums, and the cost of rent and evictions as a result.

160

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

There was one low-income housing operator in the Bay Area with multiple large properties that were running out of hot water. It turns out that people were running HW from their bathtub faucets all day. A small water heater in each unit rather than a large central WH would solve this.

170

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

These kinds of issues are ones that most low-income housing operators I’ve worked with experience regularly as well. A lot of the fires and flooding can be prevented with better design, like induction cooktops and automatic leak detection shutoff systems. Maybe not build the entire thing with wood?

170

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Some people need a higher level of care but this also reveals a huge gap in who housing is designed for. Some residents will plug their kitchen sink, turn on the faucet, and walk away. Some will turn on a cluttered stovetop leading to a fire. These are design scenarios that need consideration.

2121

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The traditional American style floor mounted water closet is another obstacle. The hole through the floor is determined by the location of the WC, which could be in an unlucky spot over the concrete. There’s a lot of flexibility however for European style WCs, which are available in the US but rare.

Wikihow photo showing the WC flange 12 inches from the wall

Photo of WC elevation showing where the outlet through the floor is

090

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This gets tricky given that North American plumbing codes require extra holes through the floor due to the amount of drainage and vent piping. The single stack drainage configuration eliminates 66% of the holes needed, making coordination for office-to-residential projects like this much simpler.

1141

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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

3423

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I’m genuinely baffled how this is even a possibility, especially since she lost last time (albeit by a slim margin).

010

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Possibly my favorite/most unique border crossing experience.

020

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yes, exactly correct with the vertical alignment of bathrooms. Also correct on drainage stacks being bathroom hadoukens.

120

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

In the US, this building would have certainly been installed like the figure shown to the left here whereas the figure on the right is representative of German and more broadly European practice. The only advantage to the US approach is that a 6-inch stack would have been used instead of 8-inch.

131

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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

2343

John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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

210

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

It’s weird that these two types of buildings share some of the same labor pool. It’s a great alternative to an AEC recession like after 2008, which reduced the overall workforce, but I do wonder what impact this has on residential construction costs moving forward.

051

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.

153

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

Whimsical yet slightly unsettling.

040

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

It looks good on new and old facades.

Photo of green 6 story residential building with pink shutters

1150

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

1210

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

This also seems to be a story of PPB quiet quitting on a murder.

Home Forward sued to evict Moe, citing the footage. But investigators were ultimately unable to determine whether Dortch was dead
when Moe wheeled her out of his apartment.
Police found no probable cause to charge Moe with a crime, and Home Forward later dropped its eviction proceedings against him.

030

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

When I was in Chongqing, a 3 yo stopped dead in her tracks while walking with her mom, staring at me like she’d seen a ghost. She lifted her arm and pointed at me with a big grin, very slowly announcing “Foreigner”. Her mom leaned down to her level, staring at me and smiling while educating her.

020

Reposted by John Lansing

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)

1215040

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.

280

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

After all, they should be expecting to find ninja turtles in Turtle Bay.

030

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? 🤦🏻‍♂️

110

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).

0100

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.

0100

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

Wikipedia is surprisingly lacking when it comes almost anything plumbing related.

110

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

This is a new category of crime.

020

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

They’re only discovered after the fact. 🙃

010

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

The shower grate here is also removable for cleaning access. Really nice design.

Photo of the stone shower pan with a perimeter drain

Photo of bathroom with a door that fully closes for the shower

050

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

I was just about to post a photo of one in China just like this! These perimeter drains are superior to all shower pans.

130

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

I suspect the flush-with-the-floor showers in hotels are an accessibility workaround to providing a steeper gradient or a second drain, but they should really either clean the traps more often or install P-traps.

070

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

There are plenty of shower pans in Europe to choose from but they must really like making water damage insurance claims.

Photo of hotel with shower pan in the UK

2130