The Evolution of Plumbing | Plumber in Fort Worth, TX
Plumbing is such an integral part of our daily lives that we can’t imagine ourselves living without it now. It is one of the major reasons that discourages people from going out camping. I mean, where would you even go when you have to go right? A stable working plumbing system is what we literally need in order to run our day to day life normally.
So many plumbing instruments in our household go unappreciated. If you start taking inventory of all the plumbing installations in your office, homes, school or any building that you seem to be spending most of your time in, you’d realize the significance of plumbing in our lives. Water is a resource that is undoubtedly a prerequisite for life. You can’t survive without water. Apart from the obvious self explanatory drinking function, we require and utilize water for other supplementary functions to sustain our livelihood. Staying hydrated isn’t enough to live a comfortable and sustainable lifestyle. Hygiene is one of those indispensible factors we require water for. Personal hygiene activities like brushing your teeth, taking a shower or a bath are a part of our everyday routine.
Apart from that, maintaining the cleanliness of your residence is important as well. Communicable diseases such as cholera, typhoid and even malaria occur mainly due to inadequate sanitation. Refugee camps are especially vulnerable to such life threatening illnesses primarily because of the absence of a plumbing system. Plumbing systems are instrumental in carrying the filth, dirt and sources of pathogenic microbes away from your place of residence and into the sewage. Plumbing basically facilitates the key function of taking all that’s dirty and shouldn’t belong in your place of residence away, in order to create a safe environment for your homes. Plumbing also allows you to access the clean water you use. Plumbing in Arlington, TX makes sure you can use the clean water for cleaning your house, cleaning yourself, drinking, cooking and for other uncountable activities. If you’re a resident of Fort Worth, Arlington, Burleson, Saginaw, Haslet, Dalworthington, Patego, Benbrook, Lake Worth, Rhome, Azle, Crowley and Mansfield, TX, all you have to do is simply call up a plumber in the Fort Worth or Arlington, TX for a one stop solution to all problems concerning plumbing. Top of the line plumbing needs such as drain cleaning, water line repair, water heater repair and other similar plumbing requirements are well taken care of in the afore mentioned Texan cities.
As hard as it may be, imagining having to travel to the nearest water reservoirs to carry some back home just so you could perform your basic life functions sounds like a nightmare to our urban ears. So, how far back does plumbing actually go and who first came up with this idea?
Let’s take a look at the history of plumbing
Pipes, joints, nuts, bolts and other common plumbing components strike the normal person as relatively recent inventions. This is because we’re conditioned to imagine the process of water supply with these manmade materials, devices and instruments. The ability to establish a properly working artificial water supply isn’t limited to recent technological components though. Did you know that the Indus Valley Civilization that existed in the northwestern regions of South Asia dating all the way back to 2600-1900 BCE, used handmade pipes to supply water to various areas? In fact archaeologists have documented that the buildings in the Indus Valley Civilization had functional wells and even bathing areas with drainages in the floor! They made their own versions of bathrooms that we connected to water tanks similar to the mechanism used in the bathrooms of today.
The Babylonians were another progressive civilization who were prosperous, innovative and successful. Under the rule of Kind Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon developed into one of the most prolific cities of ancient times. The palace of the king himself had an integrated water system installed. The palace had separate bathrooms with an extensive drainage layout and even elevated latrines seats that carried waste to a covered sewage system. This signifies that the idea of home based drainage was in place all the way back in 600 BC, if we talk solely about Babylon. The king also had an extravagant bathing ritual where slaves would pour water over him which conveniently made its way into the drain and passed through the sewage system. We’ve all probably heard of the Hanging Gardens. The Hanging Gardens was another impressive characteristic of this great civilization. It was used to irrigate vegetation planted on top of a 7 meter high wall. The Babylonians would use a mechanical device called the “Shaduf” that had an equilibrium based design consisting of a wooden shaft that had a bucket attached at one end. The shaft could be handled from one end to raise the water and empty it into the elevated beautiful troughs. We aren’t the only gardening enthusiasts in the human timeline after all.
By 2000 BC, Chinese had already begun using hollow bamboos as pipes to carry fresh water and even natural gas. But, where were these important resources carried to and from where? Salt mining was a booming business in China back then and these ingenious bamboo configurations were used to carry fresh water and natural gas to and from the salt mines.
How can we leave out the great Romans, the Egyptians and the Greeks when going through great civilizations throughout history. You might be intrigued to learn that back in 1500 BC on the island of Crete, Minoan kings used royal bathrooms with a supply of hot and cold water. In fact, archaeologists have also recovered ceramic bathtubs, along with what’s known to be the world’s first flushing toilets with an adequate drainage system that were used in the Minoan Palace of Knossos. Baked clay and stray were the materials used to make the earliest plumbing pipes.
The Egyptians are to be credited for making the first copper pipes that they utilized in their commendable building expertise. Egyptians would dig wells that were 300 feet deep for water and used their signature water wheel to carry the water, pumping it forward. In fact, the Egyptians were the only people to have bathrooms for the dead.
Furthermore, the Greeks were way ahead of their time when it came to science, art, philosophy and plumbing. Everyone in ancient Greece had bathtubs and a supply of hot and cold water. The athletes that performed in their prestigious Olympics had especially designed overhead pipes with sculpted showerheads at the end, to bathe under, after the competition.
The Romans built proper water channels that carried fresh water from the mountains, all the way to the city to be distributed throughout with the help of lead pipelines. This is also where the term ‘plumbing’ was coined. ‘plumus’ is Latin for lead. Romans additionally had luxurious steam rooms which had hot air pumping channels beneath the floors. Their waste water was also taken care of by being carried into the Tiber river by sewer pipes.