05/12/2021
10 cool facts about plumbing.
1. Standardized plumbing can be traced back to around 3,000 B.C. when the Indus River Valley civilization used earthen plumbing pipes to provide transportable water and drain wastes.
2. If you have a leaky faucet that drips twice per minute, you’ll waste over a gallon of water in a week.
3. The flushing toilet was invented by John Harrington in 1596, which is where we get the nickname “the John".
4. Mario and Luigi (of the video game Super Mario Brothers) are plumbers.
5. Have you ever heard of the myth, when you flush a toilet in the Southern Hemisphere, the water flows the opposite direction? It’s not true. The water can flow either direction in either hemisphere.
6. The word “plumber” comes from the Latin word “plumbum,” which means “lead.”
7. People who worked with lead were called Plumbarius.
8. There are two different types of plungers – a toilet plunger and a sink/shower plunger. Toilet plungers narrow at the bottom to fit into the toilet while sink/shower plungers are flat.
9. Insulating your home’s pipes can reduce the amount of heat lost as your water travels from your heater to your faucet. You’ll run less water waiting for it to warm up and save money on your utility bills.
10. To have a hot bath before 1870, you had to make a fire under your tub.
We hope you enjoyed learning some of these as much as we did!
