6 ms·

Ancient water system uncovered at Roman Stabiae

132 points by redbell 4y ago

INTPenis 4y ago
Abandoned houses in modern society get stripped of copper so imagine how rare this is, and how much we've lost. But thanks to that good old volcano we actually already knew the Romans had lead taps and water pipes.
Aardwolf 4y ago
Looks almost modern. "Archaeologists suggest that the tank was likely visible in ancient times to allow access to the two stop keys, enabling the inhabitants to regulate the flow or shut off water distribution in order to carry out maintenance operations of the system." In other words, valves! The one less ideal thing is that it's made of lead of course.
- alex_young 4y ago
  > The one less ideal thing is that it's made of lead of course. Unfortunately that’s kind of modern too. Lead pipes are still used in every US state. https://www.nrdc.org/resources/lead-pipes-are-widespread-and-used-every-state https://www.nrdc.org/resources/lead-pipes-are-widespread-and...
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    Everyone who is serious about their health and has the means should be invested in reverse osmosis filtration at home with KDF and carbon pre-filtration even if you have "good" water. Drinking huge volumes of water on the order of a gallon per day is important for general health and water is the main way most people ingest carcinogens due to sheer volume.
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      > Drinking huge volumes of water on the order of a gallon per day is important for general health I don't believe that is true, and excess water can be dangerous by causing hyponatremia.
      - orangepurple 4y ago
        Yeah nobody is getting hyponatremia from drinking a gallon of water over the course of a day. Especially if eating a typical American diet.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      You absolutely don’t need to drink a gallon of water a day under all circumstances. You also certainly don’t need an RO filter in most places. Tap water can be a great source of some minerals, depending on location and a little fluoride is great for your teeth. What carcinogens are you worried about in average tap water?
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    OK, I read that over. It seems to be entirely estimates and "could be." No one's dug up a service line and said, "Yep, there's lead in that." One GAO report says, As we reported in 2017, based on the available data, the majority of the 68,000 water systems subject to the Lead and Copper Rule at the time of our review had not been required to replace lead service lines and therefore were not required to conduct complete inventories. In other words, no one knows. So while it's not false to say that "Lead pipes are still used in every US state" it's also not provably true. Right? A good question would be, "why aren't they required to replace lead service lines?" This would be a health benefit beyond any possible doubt.
    - appletrotter 4y ago
      At the end of the day, it's how much lead is in the water coming out of your taps, right?
      - ISL 4y ago
        Yes, but if you don't have lead infrastructure in your water system, it is extremely difficult to have lead come out of your tap. If you do have lead pipes, however, it only takes a shift in pH to pull the lead into solution.
      - AlbertCory 4y ago
        Right, and more to the point, it's much easier to check tap water for the presence of lead than to inventory the entire water system (which is also worth doing).
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      I’m not sure why you’re choosing to go down this line if faulty reasoning, but the consist of municipal service lines is not completely mysterious. There’s a difference between knowing the status of every pipe and knowing what the system is generally made up of. My spouse was on the leadership team of a municipal water district. They knew at the block level where lead (or even wood & lead) service were likely to be, and had prioritized inventories of infrastructure like valves, etc that required replacement. They weren’t pioneers in this area, every water utility does this. As breaks were repaired or other ground work (sewer remediation, new storm drains, etc) they had a capital fund to make replacements. The main remaining place where lead is present is between the water main/service valve and people’s homes. That pipe is usually the financial responsibility of the homeowner, and it’s an expensive job - $5-15k. The other factor is that the lead issue, like asbestos, is overblown. As long as the civil engineers responsible for the infrastructure aren’t bypassed by criminally negligent political leadership (aka what happened in Flint, MI), there’s no meaningful risk. If you’re using an untreated well, different story.
  - throwthere 4y ago
    I'm not saying it's not a problem but after a few minutes of research I think some context is useful. The current source of lead seems mostly (maybe almost entirely?) from "lead service lines," which is the pipe between the street and the home. And, new installations of those lines has been illegal since 1986 in the US.
    - Cupertino95014 4y ago
      > new installations of those lines has been illegal since 1986 in the US News to me. Do you have a citation for that? In the San Jose area we get junk mail almost monthly imploring us to buy insurance against the cost of replacing our water lines, because of their age. So I would have assumed that they all get replaced every 50 years or so.
      - bpodgursky 4y ago
        I assume they mean "installation of service lines made of Lead"
        Cupertino95014 4y ago
        Good point. That's a better wording.
      - lazide 4y ago
        Copper is usually fine up to 75-100 years old, but a lot of houses have galvanized pipe, which rusts pretty severely over time. It’s not uncommon for them to rust almost closed within 25 years. PVC can get brittle, and PE pipe has notorious problems with connectors corroding/failing. A lot of older sewer lines are clay or cast iron, and they also crack or rust through. Like wiring, eventually it makes sense to replace them.
  - emmelaich 4y ago
    And AC (asbestos cement) FWIW. https://www.waterworld.com/drinking-water/distribution/article/16190948/the-asbestos-beneath-our-streets https://www.waterworld.com/drinking-water/distribution/artic...
- wazoox 4y ago
  Lead piping was still pretty common in the 20th century almost everywhere.
- fuzzfactor 4y ago
  It does look like the valves themselves (with tube stubs) were vendor-supplied. Could be two different vendors at two different times. Those look like modern forged tapered-stem stopcock valves, probably hand fabricated to arrive at a product not much different than a machine shop would make today. The manifold/tank could have been made from hammered and welded sheet with end(s) somewhat removable for occasional maintenance. Looks like maybe places for a couple more taps to the right of the two that are in there now. Like today, the plumbers were the ones who put the parts together and ran the pipes to the points-of-use.
- jbay808 4y ago
  There are lots of Roman valves in old villas or places like Pompeii.[1] As you say, the design hasn't changed much! [1] http://www.shinjovalve.com/news/let-s-talk-about-ancient-roman-valves.html http://www.shinjovalve.com/news/let-s-talk-about-ancient-rom...
- bergenty 4y ago
  I went to a museum in Italy and Roman plumbing was very modern looking. They had valves, t bends, taps, pressure nozzles etc. made of bronze or lead. Really did not expect that.
cryptonector 4y ago
The tank in the picture strikes me as a water hammer arrestor.
- jaclaz 4y ago
  Surely it isn't a tank (it would make no sense to have a small, 5 or 10 liters or so tank), but it is also not a hammer arrestor, as it is not vertical, and there is no way it could provide the air cushion needed. Very likely it is simply a sort of distribution manifold.
  - cryptonector 4y ago
    It might not always have been horizontal.
    - jaclaz 4y ago
      Oww, come on, there is no way it could have been vertical, and even if it was, it would be way too short, given the diameter, to allow for a meaningful air cushion. Besides, in actual hammer arrestors both inlet and outlets would have been at the very bottom.
      - cryptonector 4y ago
        Fair. Then what's the point of that tank?
        jaclaz 4y ago
        As I see it, it is not a tank, but rather a manifold to support the two valves/taps. An example of a "modern" one (similar ones in plumbing are still hand made on the spot with pipes, but this is a pre-fabricated one): https://media-www.canadiantire.ca/product/fixing/plumbing/rough-plumbing/0631319/4-outlete-manifold-copper-25861199-e552-4101-8548-5cc251a1b9e5.png?imwidth=1024 https://media-www.canadiantire.ca/product/fixing/plumbing/ro...
novalis78 4y ago
One of my precious teenage memories is visiting a friend whose parents had a good library and set of Roman bilingual writings (similar to the Loeb Classics series). I picked Pliny’s letters and read the entire thing in one gulp. I was blown away how modern the thoughts and problems and considerations were. The thousand years of Darkness after the fall of the Roman Empire were no joke. If we all can contribute just a little bit to keep civilization thriving for centuries to come, we have done our part.
- artificial 4y ago
  Isn’t that period when Europe pulled ahead technologically in every way from antiquity? For example many civilizations pursued alchemy and why only in Europe did it turn into chemistry? Same with astrology into astronomy. Wind power, metallurgy, ship building, farming, stirrups (using the weight of the horse with the rider) with spears, cathedral building, the university system etc. The eastern empire thrived until the Ottomans overthrew in the 14th. It has to do with reason and progress and the systems that drove those. I think a larger part was the translation from Greek to latin between 1125-1200.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    Well, Isaac Newton was also a dedicated alchemist who spent some time and energy on a search for the philosopher's stone (which in no way denigrates his other work on gravity, calculus, optics, etc.). That was pretty common thinking up through the late 18th century, when people like Lavoisier and Priestly revolutionized everything via careful quantitative measurements (and open publication, i.e. not keeping their work secret). Again, this was an area where Islamic civilization preservend and advanced on Roman-Greek knowledge during the European Dark Ages. There's also some interesting history regarding the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who apparently made a determined effort to wipe out the alchemists in the Empire because he believed they'd actually managed to make gold, and feared debasement of the currency or the funding of rebel armies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_in_the_medieval_Islami... I think this is a legitimate YT channel, here's a clip on the Diocletian persecution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG9Po7dlgUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG9Po7dlgUo
Ptchd 4y ago
Was it made out of lead like our modern water systems? /s
manv1 4y ago
The fascinating thing about the Roman world is that they did so many thing so well, and that those things were done by a very small number of smart people. Rome over time produced a surprisingly large number of those people. I suspect one main reason is they had documentation. As an example, one of my favorites is reading the water system survey this guy did when he got stuck with the job: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Frontinus/De_Aquis/text*.html http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Frontinus/... I mean, that's fucking good documentation. Sure it took 400 years before someone wrote it down, but he was also reading through existing docs for a lot of this.

132 points by redbell 4y ago

Abandoned houses in modern society get stripped of copper so imagine how rare this is, and how much we've lost. But thanks to that good old volcano we actually already knew the Romans had lead taps and water pipes.

Aardwolf 4y ago

Looks almost modern. "Archaeologists suggest that the tank was likely visible in ancient times to allow access to the two stop keys, enabling the inhabitants to regulate the flow or shut off water distribution in order to carry out maintenance operations of the system." In other words, valves! The one less ideal thing is that it's made of lead of course.

alex_young 4y ago
> The one less ideal thing is that it's made of lead of course. Unfortunately that’s kind of modern too. Lead pipes are still used in every US state. https://www.nrdc.org/resources/lead-pipes-are-widespread-and-used-every-state https://www.nrdc.org/resources/lead-pipes-are-widespread-and...
- orangepurple 4y ago
  Everyone who is serious about their health and has the means should be invested in reverse osmosis filtration at home with KDF and carbon pre-filtration even if you have "good" water. Drinking huge volumes of water on the order of a gallon per day is important for general health and water is the main way most people ingest carcinogens due to sheer volume.
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    > Drinking huge volumes of water on the order of a gallon per day is important for general health I don't believe that is true, and excess water can be dangerous by causing hyponatremia.
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      Yeah nobody is getting hyponatremia from drinking a gallon of water over the course of a day. Especially if eating a typical American diet.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    You absolutely don’t need to drink a gallon of water a day under all circumstances. You also certainly don’t need an RO filter in most places. Tap water can be a great source of some minerals, depending on location and a little fluoride is great for your teeth. What carcinogens are you worried about in average tap water?
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  OK, I read that over. It seems to be entirely estimates and "could be." No one's dug up a service line and said, "Yep, there's lead in that." One GAO report says, As we reported in 2017, based on the available data, the majority of the 68,000 water systems subject to the Lead and Copper Rule at the time of our review had not been required to replace lead service lines and therefore were not required to conduct complete inventories. In other words, no one knows. So while it's not false to say that "Lead pipes are still used in every US state" it's also not provably true. Right? A good question would be, "why aren't they required to replace lead service lines?" This would be a health benefit beyond any possible doubt.
  - appletrotter 4y ago
    At the end of the day, it's how much lead is in the water coming out of your taps, right?
    - ISL 4y ago
      Yes, but if you don't have lead infrastructure in your water system, it is extremely difficult to have lead come out of your tap. If you do have lead pipes, however, it only takes a shift in pH to pull the lead into solution.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      Right, and more to the point, it's much easier to check tap water for the presence of lead than to inventory the entire water system (which is also worth doing).
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    I’m not sure why you’re choosing to go down this line if faulty reasoning, but the consist of municipal service lines is not completely mysterious. There’s a difference between knowing the status of every pipe and knowing what the system is generally made up of. My spouse was on the leadership team of a municipal water district. They knew at the block level where lead (or even wood & lead) service were likely to be, and had prioritized inventories of infrastructure like valves, etc that required replacement. They weren’t pioneers in this area, every water utility does this. As breaks were repaired or other ground work (sewer remediation, new storm drains, etc) they had a capital fund to make replacements. The main remaining place where lead is present is between the water main/service valve and people’s homes. That pipe is usually the financial responsibility of the homeowner, and it’s an expensive job - $5-15k. The other factor is that the lead issue, like asbestos, is overblown. As long as the civil engineers responsible for the infrastructure aren’t bypassed by criminally negligent political leadership (aka what happened in Flint, MI), there’s no meaningful risk. If you’re using an untreated well, different story.
- throwthere 4y ago
  I'm not saying it's not a problem but after a few minutes of research I think some context is useful. The current source of lead seems mostly (maybe almost entirely?) from "lead service lines," which is the pipe between the street and the home. And, new installations of those lines has been illegal since 1986 in the US.
  - Cupertino95014 4y ago
    > new installations of those lines has been illegal since 1986 in the US News to me. Do you have a citation for that? In the San Jose area we get junk mail almost monthly imploring us to buy insurance against the cost of replacing our water lines, because of their age. So I would have assumed that they all get replaced every 50 years or so.
    - bpodgursky 4y ago
      I assume they mean "installation of service lines made of Lead"
      - Cupertino95014 4y ago
        Good point. That's a better wording.
    - lazide 4y ago
      Copper is usually fine up to 75-100 years old, but a lot of houses have galvanized pipe, which rusts pretty severely over time. It’s not uncommon for them to rust almost closed within 25 years. PVC can get brittle, and PE pipe has notorious problems with connectors corroding/failing. A lot of older sewer lines are clay or cast iron, and they also crack or rust through. Like wiring, eventually it makes sense to replace them.
- emmelaich 4y ago
  And AC (asbestos cement) FWIW. https://www.waterworld.com/drinking-water/distribution/article/16190948/the-asbestos-beneath-our-streets https://www.waterworld.com/drinking-water/distribution/artic...
wazoox 4y ago
Lead piping was still pretty common in the 20th century almost everywhere.
fuzzfactor 4y ago
It does look like the valves themselves (with tube stubs) were vendor-supplied. Could be two different vendors at two different times. Those look like modern forged tapered-stem stopcock valves, probably hand fabricated to arrive at a product not much different than a machine shop would make today. The manifold/tank could have been made from hammered and welded sheet with end(s) somewhat removable for occasional maintenance. Looks like maybe places for a couple more taps to the right of the two that are in there now. Like today, the plumbers were the ones who put the parts together and ran the pipes to the points-of-use.
jbay808 4y ago
There are lots of Roman valves in old villas or places like Pompeii.[1] As you say, the design hasn't changed much! [1] http://www.shinjovalve.com/news/let-s-talk-about-ancient-roman-valves.html http://www.shinjovalve.com/news/let-s-talk-about-ancient-rom...
bergenty 4y ago
I went to a museum in Italy and Roman plumbing was very modern looking. They had valves, t bends, taps, pressure nozzles etc. made of bronze or lead. Really did not expect that.

cryptonector 4y ago

The tank in the picture strikes me as a water hammer arrestor.

jaclaz 4y ago
Surely it isn't a tank (it would make no sense to have a small, 5 or 10 liters or so tank), but it is also not a hammer arrestor, as it is not vertical, and there is no way it could provide the air cushion needed. Very likely it is simply a sort of distribution manifold.
- cryptonector 4y ago
  It might not always have been horizontal.
  - jaclaz 4y ago
    Oww, come on, there is no way it could have been vertical, and even if it was, it would be way too short, given the diameter, to allow for a meaningful air cushion. Besides, in actual hammer arrestors both inlet and outlets would have been at the very bottom.
    - cryptonector 4y ago
      Fair. Then what's the point of that tank?
      - jaclaz 4y ago
        As I see it, it is not a tank, but rather a manifold to support the two valves/taps. An example of a "modern" one (similar ones in plumbing are still hand made on the spot with pipes, but this is a pre-fabricated one): https://media-www.canadiantire.ca/product/fixing/plumbing/rough-plumbing/0631319/4-outlete-manifold-copper-25861199-e552-4101-8548-5cc251a1b9e5.png?imwidth=1024 https://media-www.canadiantire.ca/product/fixing/plumbing/ro...

novalis78 4y ago

One of my precious teenage memories is visiting a friend whose parents had a good library and set of Roman bilingual writings (similar to the Loeb Classics series). I picked Pliny’s letters and read the entire thing in one gulp. I was blown away how modern the thoughts and problems and considerations were. The thousand years of Darkness after the fall of the Roman Empire were no joke. If we all can contribute just a little bit to keep civilization thriving for centuries to come, we have done our part.

artificial 4y ago
Isn’t that period when Europe pulled ahead technologically in every way from antiquity? For example many civilizations pursued alchemy and why only in Europe did it turn into chemistry? Same with astrology into astronomy. Wind power, metallurgy, ship building, farming, stirrups (using the weight of the horse with the rider) with spears, cathedral building, the university system etc. The eastern empire thrived until the Ottomans overthrew in the 14th. It has to do with reason and progress and the systems that drove those. I think a larger part was the translation from Greek to latin between 1125-1200.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Well, Isaac Newton was also a dedicated alchemist who spent some time and energy on a search for the philosopher's stone (which in no way denigrates his other work on gravity, calculus, optics, etc.). That was pretty common thinking up through the late 18th century, when people like Lavoisier and Priestly revolutionized everything via careful quantitative measurements (and open publication, i.e. not keeping their work secret). Again, this was an area where Islamic civilization preservend and advanced on Roman-Greek knowledge during the European Dark Ages. There's also some interesting history regarding the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who apparently made a determined effort to wipe out the alchemists in the Empire because he believed they'd actually managed to make gold, and feared debasement of the currency or the funding of rebel armies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_in_the_medieval_Islami... I think this is a legitimate YT channel, here's a clip on the Diocletian persecution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG9Po7dlgUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG9Po7dlgUo

Ptchd 4y ago

Was it made out of lead like our modern water systems? /s

manv1 4y ago

The fascinating thing about the Roman world is that they did so many thing so well, and that those things were done by a very small number of smart people. Rome over time produced a surprisingly large number of those people. I suspect one main reason is they had documentation. As an example, one of my favorites is reading the water system survey this guy did when he got stuck with the job: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Frontinus/De_Aquis/text*.html http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Frontinus/... I mean, that's fucking good documentation. Sure it took 400 years before someone wrote it down, but he was also reading through existing docs for a lot of this.