US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in the last 50 years

Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by yamtaddle on Monday January 23, 2023 @02:42PM (#34493881)

Shark bite is awesome for capping a broken pipe until you can get around to a proper fix. Love those shark-bite caps. IMO every home owner should have pipe cutters for the pipes in their house (whatever materials those may be), and a set of those caps ready to apply for every size of pipe they've got. Ought to be as common as having a screwdriver and hammer. They're absolute life-savers when a leak or pipe burst happens at odd hours and you just want to get the leak stopped and the water back on and go back to bed or get back to work or whatever. Cut the pipe, steel wool the end clean, slap the shark bite cap on, get on with life until you have the time to properly fix it. Turns something very inconvenient into something merely a little inconvenient. Beats the hell out of having to break out the solder or pipe glue at 2AM.

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by mindslight on Monday January 23, 2023 @03:43PM (#34494731)

If you've got a significant leak in a supply pipe, there should be a valve on the branch that will allow you to shut off just that branch rather than the whole house. You might need to shut off the whole house first while you figure out where that valve is, but you probably won't have to do ad-hoc plumbing to get most of the house back on.

But yes, in general I'm always for people becoming familiar with tools and DIY.

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by latchkey on Monday January 23, 2023 @04:13PM (#34495134)

My place has no master valves in the bathroom branch for the cold water feed. I can shut off the hot water though since that comes from an on demand unit that I installed. I have to shut off the entire condo building (14 units) to do any work in there. You can be sure that I'm going to add a master valve to that branch...

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by yamtaddle on Monday January 23, 2023 @03:58PM (#34494946)

Owned a half-dozen US houses built between 1907 and 2015 and have never actually seen such a thing. If you're lucky someone's done some work on a branch at some point and was courteous enough to install a shut-off, though usually off somewhere weird where there was already damage or whatever, not where you'd normally look for it.

[EDIT] Actually, my parents' very-new house has that... but because it's all-PEX, so it's super-easy to install it that way, with a central panel full of shut-offs for various parts.

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by mindslight on Monday January 23, 2023 @04:33PM (#34495396)

Hah. I hadn't realized I was taking that for granted (over multiple houses myself), and just figured they were required by code (even though it makes the chrome sink shutoffs kind of redundant). Score 1 for DIYers doing more maintainable work than professionals.

FWIW a SharkBite valve or NPT adapter would seem to be a handier thing to have around than a pure cap. For one, you can attach a valve without shutting the water off.

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by yamtaddle on Monday January 23, 2023 @05:36PM (#34496112)

Hell, maybe it is required by code in some places. I've only really looked at the plumbing of houses in a three-state cluster in the Midwest, maybe elsewhere more-conveniently-designed plumbing is normal.

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by matwood on Monday January 23, 2023 @05:18PM (#34495914)

I had the main irrigation feed burst over Christmas and it's just a branch off the main line into the house with no valve! Had to turn the water off at the street, and couldn't fix it until the day after Christmas.

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by jessaustin on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @03:37PM (#34509939)

How did that setup pass a code inspection?!

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by mindslight on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @05:26PM (#34511459)

Maybe they're not in an area where it freezes, so the main shutoff doesn't need to be inside the house, and there's no need to shut off and drain the silcock in the winter?

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by jessaustin on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @05:52PM (#34511773)

Let's assume all that is true. Still, shit breaks, and all branches off the main have to be valved separately. With the current setup, contamination (e.g. by sewage) of a branch couldn't be isolated from the house. That is not acceptable.

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by mindslight on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @06:29PM (#34512150)

I was the one who started the thread thinking that shutoffs on branches were the norm, and apparently that's just not the case everywhere.

Also I don't know what you mean about sewage contamination? Sewage contamination of potable water lines would indicate a hugely weird problem.

AFAIK backflow preventers (fancy check valves), which prevent water in the house from going back into the municipal distribution, are standard on new installs. But I think that requirement is recent as of the past few decades, so most houses aren't going to have them.

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by jessaustin on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @07:09PM (#34512493)

I suppose that depends on the typical age of houses in your area? Just as supply lines inside houses might get contaminated, supply lines outside houses might get contaminated. Perhaps from sewage, perhaps from runoff, or whatever. Outside lines are more likely to be broken by sloppy excavation, for example. Simple isolation valves are sensible even in situations that don't require backflow preventers, such as on a private well.

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by mindslight on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @09:56PM (#34513817)

I still don't really understand what you're saying.

Yes, I agree isolation valves are good. But as far as what code requires? It seems that if isolation valves aren't required on branches, then the only isolation valve that is required is the main house valve that can isolate it from the street water main.

So I can't figure out what else you think would have been required to pass inspection in the comment you originally responded to.

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Re:US Construction worker productivity has dropped 40% in th... by matwood on Monday January 23, 2023 @03:54PM (#34494901)

> there should be a valve on the branch that will allow you to shut off just that branch rather than the whole house

Haha...should is doing a lot of work here. Shut off valves like you mention are great, but even newer houses often don't have them.

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