I lived in central Philly for a while. Being largely nocturnal, I'd often be out walking in the early morning.
So one morning, I saw someone walking toward me, wearing a stethoscope-like device, with a tube hanging down, almost touching the sidewalk. At first, I thought "crazy person, take care".
But then, I saw a "Philadelphia Water Department" logo. Basically, he was listening for leaks. His partner was one block away, and they talked via radio. So they could triangulate.
Stories about wooden water lines come up pretty regularly. In every instance I've read about, they're not in use; they're just still buried, alongside the iron pipes that replaced them long, long ago. That makes sense to me; they would probably lay new iron pipes along the same route, burying them as they went, and only disconnect the wood pipes after the iron pipes were in place. No sense removing the wood as they went.
Wood pipes apparently have some surprising advantages. For one thing, the wood doesn't rot when it's immersed constantly in fresh water. The pipes don't corrode as easily, and the water doesn't freeze as easily either:
The bike path along the river goes right past it, and you can ride all the way to Valley Forge almost completely on a bike path free of motorized vehicles. (I am not paid by the city; I just like riding along rivers.)
The Schuylkill provides half of Philadelphia's public water supply (the Delaware provides the other half). You're almost certainly drinking it all the time. Of course it's treated now.
This reminds me when I was roaming around Annapolis, MD, I spotted one of the many markers around the historic downtown, about how utility workers stumbled upon clay pipes when they were servicing underground water pipes.
The wooden pipes in Edinburgh were recently removed from George’s Square and are on display on the Middle Meadows Walk (though I don’t think they were included into Forza Horizen 4)
I appreciate the article and the fact that it is certainly an example of "today's 10,000"[0]. I don't appreciate the title making it sound like this is a new discovery that we used to have wooden water infrastructure. There's a nice little museum in the historical Philadelphia Waterworks building behind the art museum, and there is a lot of material about the original piping of the city.
Dear WaPo: 1) No, I will not be subscribing to your podcasts in order to find out if they're worth listening to. 2) The odds are still low because ... in case you didn't notice ... there are many excellent non-subscription podcasts (to mention just one: 'BackStory with the American History Guys' ; https://audioboom.com/channels/4987698.rss ) ... and most of them appreciate you sending them what you think they're worth.
So one morning, I saw someone walking toward me, wearing a stethoscope-like device, with a tube hanging down, almost touching the sidewalk. At first, I thought "crazy person, take care".
But then, I saw a "Philadelphia Water Department" logo. Basically, he was listening for leaks. His partner was one block away, and they talked via radio. So they could triangulate.