History of Plumbing in America

Baseball fans take note. Arizona’s Hohokam Park in Mesa, Ariz., may ring a bell as the spring training grounds of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. It is named for the far-flung, extinct Hohokam Indians who played their own brand of ball and worked those same fields centuries before. They were the master farmers of America’s Southwest, and engineers of great networks of irrigation canals in the Salt River Valley. They first appeared about 350 B.C., building canals of open ditches, gouged out with stone tools and wooden hoes. The canals spanned almost 250 miles, stimulating trade and commerce between communities of hundreds and thousands of people. No one knows why, whether by climatic upheaval, drought or floods, the Hohokams suddenly vanished in 1450 A.D., well before Columbus discovered America or the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
American water pipes originally were made from bored-out logs like this artifact.

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The Chain Is Pulled on Britain's Crapper

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has flushed Britain's claims to have invented the water closet down the pan with the discovery of a 2,000-year-old toilet complete with running water, a stone seat and a comfortable armrest. Archaeologists found the antique latrine in the tomb of a king of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC to 24 AD), who believed his soul would need to enjoy human life after death, the official Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. "This top-grade stool is the earliest of its kind ever discovered in the world, meaning that the Chinese used the world's earliest water closet which is quite like what we are using today," Xinhua quoted the archaeologists' report as saying.

"It was a great invention and a symbol of social civilization of that time," Xinhua said.

The invention of the flush toilet is widely attributed to London plumber Thomas Crapper, who patented a U-bend siphoning system for flushing the pan in the late 19th century, and who also installed toilets for Queen Victoria.

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Plumbing Care & Repair Handbook 

The Plumbing Code

The Code outlines the best and most modern methods to be used in plumbing installations. Since the plumbing in any private or public building is a part of the community water and sewage disposal system, it is vital that such installations should not be left to the discretion of irresponsible individuals. The protection of the public health and safety must be maintained by the establishment of sound code provisions.

A plumbing or sanitation code is not a plumber's code. It is rather a set of Rules and Regulations imposed by cities, counties and states on anyone who undertakes any work involving the installation of drinking water, sewer or toilet facilities in homes, offices, factories, schools and hospitals. Regardless of who might do the work, plumbing and sanitation codes require that it be done in a specific, safe manner because it was found that failure to do so caused widespread disease, which can be crippling and deadly-to the community.            Plumbing Code