would people a 100 years later think "people a hundred years ago glued plastic pipes using glue, and laid them in the ground. Now it has created more work for us to fix"

When engineers become plumbers. What condition of chemical reaction is dissolving a cast iron pipe? I'm generally curious if this is accurate. Especially in over the counter products. A guess of mine is that the damage from chemical treatment of old metal pipes (including thinning copper drains) is caused more so by the expansion created when the chemical reaction heats up. And it does fast. This expansion can cause thining metal to crack.

Glass lining of cast iron tanks is a thing in the boiler industry.

i would guess that the corrosion and deteration of CI drainage systems you are referring too is more likely caused by old age. To prevent further deterioration where replacement isnt an option they can install a liquid liner that is more of an epoxy.

But like some else said. PVC or ABS.

At least where I live cast iron pipes are lined with epoxy coating. The content of the pipes is never in contact with cast iron directly except for the non-factory ends if they've not been painted after cutting.

Also, in my experience those consumer grade drain cleaners do nothing and there's no reason to for anyone to use them.

PVC man

Just an aqeous solution is enough if it sits for long enough at a high enough concentration... like maybe pouring the equivalent of a 10M solution into your drain and letting it sit for 15 minutes, and doing that once every 2 weeks like my mom does...

most households will not dump hot, concentrated lye down the drain, regularly or even everyday, so no problem :) Thank you for the information

You can dissolve glass with sodium hydroxide. No, I'm not making that up, and yes, eventually it would be an issue.

Also sodium hydroxide doesn't really do much of anything to pipes besides acting like a salt. Its not chemically attacking the cast iron, which is actually a pretty good material combo with NaOH.

But to answer your question yeah those kinds of pipes exist but they're used for chemistry or industrial use. You would probably need to custom order them, and have everything perfectly planned out. It also will certainly add at least 3 zeros onto your plumbing bill for materials, tools, and consumables.

If houses were built to be more maintainable, you wouldn't see this sort of thing.

Nah, think of the shape the hose would make. You need a trap so when it's not connected to your faucet, you don't have a bug highway into your kitchen

this is one of those big little things your hind brain notices and makes you go "man this house feels old, somehow"

but like, that's why we invented conduits! They're walls for the cables/pipes!

My college dorm was an old stone building that had been a Civil War hospital, so it was built before indoor plumbing or electricity. Luckily, it also had high ceilings, so all the pipes and conduits were all exposed above us. There was a pipe just outside my dorm room door, and whenever I'd go out, I'd jump up and do 10 pull ups.

I'd say it's a pretty solid £35's worth of plumbing

The reason we put them in the walls is so they don’t get pulled or damaged, which creates an electrocution and/or fire hazard.

When houses were first retrofitted with electricity, they ran the wires on the walls, not inside them.

That does make more sense.

I lived for a while in Australia in a house with water pipes running on the outside and I found that shocking.

We pay a LOT, in terms of time and complexity, for having nice smooth pretty interior walls.

I was referring more to internal pipes. If the pipes were displayed on top of the walls instead of inside it, repairs would be easier, and leaks would be caught faster. If a pipe wasn't going to freeze inside a wall, it certainly shouldn't freeze inside the house.

I dunno I kind of like it when my water keeps running and the pipes don’t burst even when it’s freezing outside

I think the era was housewives, not the cause.

But yeah conduits should be ran outside walls and decoritively integrated into the design of the space. Additionally, they should be easily accessible when maintenance is needed.

That's probably on the other side of OPs picture

As someone who just had to have a wall torn out to repair a pipe, having it on the outside would've saved me so much time, money, and damage.

Where you lost me was blaming housewives for causing pipes to be put behind walls.

Coulda gone with one less hole. That's just more work.

Honestly I don't think we should be embedding plumbing and electrics INSIDE walls. Such conduits should be wall-mounted so we can monitor their condition, repair things easier, and gaze at the wonders of modernity.

They're embedded in walls from an era of "propperness" and victorian housewives. We need a cyberpunk turn in home design. It's long over due but instead people are trying to hide their sinks and smooth over electrical outlets so they can further take things for granted.

I want to see the pipes!

I don't see the problem here