I was lucky, starting my professional career as a plumber, I did not find the installation of a sewage system from cast iron pipes. As I imagine what it is like to raise pipes, tees made of gray cast iron from the first floor to the fifth, so the legs are already giving way while sitting at the computer monitor. And also such processes as chasing, filling the gray compound, installing fasteners... carried by.
The only thing I caught were moments when the riser joints were stamped when it was replaced with polymer pipes made of polypropylene and PVC.
Before answering the title of the article, let's find out some points about polymer pipes.
It is a pleasure for installers to work with plastic, firstly, their weight is very low. The material lends itself well to cutting with an improvised tool. Socket connections with rubber bands allow you to make a sealed joint in a few movements. Not a job, but a fairy tale. These moments significantly reduce the cost of installation.
In addition, as practice shows, plastic pipes are much less clogged, their walls are smooth, which does not allow hair and fat to cling to them and lead to problems. And the service life is over 50 years.
The fattest minus modern sewer pipes have low sound absorption, the inhabitants of the first floors of high-rise buildings will not let you lie. But there are some ways to reduce the sounds from falling "bricks" I previously told the readers about this.
If a plastic pipe is a "miracle", then why was cast-iron sewage widely used in the USSR?
Metallurgy in those days was very well developed, in contrast to the chemical industry. And the sphere of plastic products generally developed poorly.
The leaders were reluctant to take steps to improve the quality and increase the number of polymer goods. Metallurgists in power lobbied for their interests. because the factories were highly developed and the management did not want to have recessions in this production sector due to the replacement of their products with plastics. In particular, the pipeline.
But still, a cast-iron sewer pipe has advantages over a plastic sewer:
- Maximum fire safety
- High strength
- Better tightness when installed correctly
But capitalism won, the maximum savings on material and installation made themselves felt. Therefore, the cast iron pipe remains in the last century, except for some points.