I just painted my whole house with lead paint, both indoors and outdoors. Now I want to replace all my plumbing with lead pipe, and cover it with asbestos insulation.
I'm tired of the government telling me all this stuff is bad, and plan to prove them wrong. After all, I'm a man, and a tough one at that. I could eat lead and be just fine, but since it tastes crappy (yea, I tried it), I'll just use my lead silverware, get my water from lead pipes, and eat my dinner off the dinner plates I painted with the left over lead paint from when I painted the house. And at bedtime, I have my specially made asbestos blankets & sheets. Now, if only I can figure out how to generate my own radon, I'll be happy.
But there's a problem, I cant find any lead pipe. The plumbers all want to sell me this cancer causing plastic pipe called PEX. I sure as hell dont want that dangerous stuff in my house. Give me LEAD.... the pipe made for the REAL MAN !!!!!
Somehow I think you're just screwing around, but.... I do agree that real men are not afraid of all this stuff. Hell, I've removed asbestos from pipes by just wetting the stuff. And Radon is just another way to make money if you ask me. But why add to your problems. I dont know where you would even buy lead paint anymore, but why use it, it will depreciate the value of your property.
As for the lead pipes, if you really want lead pipe, and cant buy it, make your own. Lead melts easily in a lead pot. Make a mold out of sand and pour your own. I'm not sure how you'd make the hole in the middle though. Maybe a wooden dowel, which will burn away after you pour it. Or use a steel pipe, but it will need to be coated with something or it wont come out. Maybe coat it with sand using some sort of glue.
There must have been some process to make lead pipe in the past, it was used in many cities and towns. I never knew how long the rolls would have been, but they must have been terribly heavy.
Hey, we all need to have a little fun once and awhile. Trolls do things to harm others, there was no harm done here. I thought it was pretty funny actually. And in some regards, there was even some truth to it. I for one and fed up with the government controlling what products I can and can not use, and how I use them. This upcoming ban on incandescent lightbulbs is just one example. I'm all in favor of protecting the environment, but now when it involves replacing a relatively harmless product (common bulb) with one filled with mercury, which costs 10 to 20 times more. Even the saving of energy will never pay the difference in cost of the bulbs, and they do not even work in certain applications.
Then too, asbestos can be harmful if used in certain ways (inhaled the dust), but having guys wearing space suits at a cost of many thousands of dollars to remove it from the pipes in one home is just a big money maker. Then look at all the additional gargage they produce. Plastic walls, tons of tape, plastic bags and wraps, and in the end, it all goes to the same landfill as other garbage. Anyone can remove it. Just soak it well to eliminate dust, wear a respirator mask, and secure it in bags. Wash up any residue down a sewer, and wash yourself and clothing afterwards. Total cost, a sack of trash bags, a utility knife, and a garden hose.
And for Radon..... Well, I think the last laugh will be on those who dish out thousands of dollars for soem company to install all kinds of gadgets. People have lived on this planet for all time, often lived in caves in the past, which is where there would be the maximum radon. It's not so much the radon, it's that we now build homes so tightly, we are actually living inside a plastic bag. While we save a few bucks on our heating and cooling bills, we now live in these tightly sealed "bags" where we lack oxygen in winter, spread germs, and where molds and allergens grow in the walls because the house can not breathe.
So you may save $100 on your heating bill in winter, but you will spend $3000 to have a radon device installed, which will add $60 to your yearly electric bill to operate, and you'll spend another extra $500 or more each year on medical bills because of the lack of oxygen and spread of germs in a house that does not breathe.
I'm damn tired of the government telling me how I must live, when most of these laws are only created so that someone can get their filthy hands into my wallet with some scam.
We all know you are having "fun," but it's still an interesting question.
One reason that Pb was used so much for plumbing (in fact, the word itself comes from the Latin for lead) is that it is so damn easy to makes pipes from lead.
Toward the end of the "lead era" pipe could be made by high pressure extrusion presses. The lead protection on some telephone cables was made this way.
But lead pipe technology is over 2,000 years old!
The "quick and dirty" way is to just pour out liquid lead on a slab of marble or whatever and create a sheet of lead. This was trimmed and then rolled into a pipe shape by wrapping it around a properly sized piece of wood. The ends could be joined by welding (i.e.: using a very hot tool to barely melt the junction) or by soldering with a tin/lead alloy or by pouring additional lead onto the joint.
Sheets can also be rolled out or just hammered out also.
Lead is still used in some organ pipes using the solder technique.
Joints in lead pipe just required the plumber to heat up a laddle of lead to the melting point and just pouring it onto the joint. Rags were used to "wipe" the joint and make the liquid lead go where wanted. Since lead is quite soft, excess could easily be trimmed away.
During my years as a handyman and remodeler, I ran across lead pipes several times. Mostly just the lateral supply pipe from the street to the house, but I did see some interior lead supply pipes and even a few drain pipes. I always noticed the "ball" of lead where they were joined together. My question was whether they had some sort of mold they poured the molten lead to make that ball? I cant see it just poured on, there had to be something to make the shape. Maybe some steel device that clamped around the junction where lead was poured into a hole on the top.
I did lead together cast iron drain pipes several times using oakum and a lead pot and the chisels that packed it into place. I even got pretty good at that, but I never tried to join lead pipes. Several times I found lead laterals with the shut off valve on the basement being defective. The first time I ran across this I was not sure what to do, but a plumbing supply store sold me a clamp on brass junction piece that had a rubber seal that tightened against the lead. The other end had a threaded female for installing a new valve or any common steel pipe. I used these things several times later and they were quick and easy.
But those well formed balls of lead at the joints were not just made by pouring lead around the pipes. Whether horizontal or vertical, there had to be something to hold their shape.
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