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this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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Plumbing
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Honestly I don't think we should be embedding plumbing and electrics INSIDE walls. Such conduits should be wall-mounted so we can monitor their condition, repair things easier, and gaze at the wonders of modernity.
They're embedded in walls from an era of "propperness" and victorian housewives. We need a cyberpunk turn in home design. It's long over due but instead people are trying to hide their sinks and smooth over electrical outlets so they can further take things for granted.
I want to see the pipes!
The reason we put them in the walls is so they don’t get pulled or damaged, which creates an electrocution and/or fire hazard.
but like, that's why we invented conduits! They're walls for the cables/pipes!
My college dorm was an old stone building that had been a Civil War hospital, so it was built before indoor plumbing or electricity. Luckily, it also had high ceilings, so all the pipes and conduits were all exposed above us. There was a pipe just outside my dorm room door, and whenever I'd go out, I'd jump up and do 10 pull ups.
As someone who just had to have a wall torn out to repair a pipe, having it on the outside would've saved me so much time, money, and damage.
Where you lost me was blaming housewives for causing pipes to be put behind walls.
I dunno I kind of like it when my water keeps running and the pipes don’t burst even when it’s freezing outside
I was referring more to internal pipes. If the pipes were displayed on top of the walls instead of inside it, repairs would be easier, and leaks would be caught faster. If a pipe wasn't going to freeze inside a wall, it certainly shouldn't freeze inside the house.
That does make more sense.
I lived for a while in Australia in a house with water pipes running on the outside and I found that shocking.
We pay a LOT, in terms of time and complexity, for having nice smooth pretty interior walls.
I think the era was housewives, not the cause.
But yeah conduits should be ran outside walls and decoritively integrated into the design of the space. Additionally, they should be easily accessible when maintenance is needed.
When houses were first retrofitted with electricity, they ran the wires on the walls, not inside them.
this is one of those big little things your hind brain notices and makes you go "man this house feels old, somehow"