I built a bird feeder similar to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F4wdJSEVEo only I used clear polycarbonate for the body which allowed me to see the level of bird seed remaining.
Everyday uses for PVC water pipe
41–50 of 163 posts
Re: Everyday uses for PVC water pipe
#42Also, curtain rods.
I don't see that listed but I used 3 PVC pipes and two 45-degree PVC couplings for about 5 years as a curtain rod above a bay window in my breakfast nook.
I painted them black and glued a finial on each end to disguise it. Nobody ever noticed, which is quite disappointing.
Re: Everyday uses for PVC water pipe
#43Fencing weapon sheaths (sabre, epée or foil).
Re: Everyday uses for PVC water pipe
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience 99% of indoor plumbing in new builds in Canada (US too I believe) is PEX, not (C)PVC. PVC is common in sewage, drainage, and as conduit.
PVC is quite common for water utility use in the US in the form of AWWA C900. I once said hi to the project engineer of a water main replacement project (he was walking around the site), and he waxed poetic about C900 pipe. It’s installed using crowbars, and the joints need to be externally restrained. Those dinky 1” pipes in your house develop quite modest tension at 100psi. 8” underground pipes are a whole differen…
Whenever there are elevation changes for underground pressurized pipes there are usually cast in place concrete thrust blocks that take the load from the pipe and give more soil area to push against, minimizing movement. Otherwise you're just depending on friction.
But public infrastructure that wants to move is always scary conceptually
Re: Everyday uses for PVC water pipe
#45Have also seen people make sleeping platforms out of schedule 40 PVC, for sleeping in the back of a car.
Re: Everyday uses for PVC water pipe
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh. In the US, HDPE outdoors is somewhat common in larger installations and for utilities, and PVC is used for almost all landscape irrigation. Galvanized steel is still surprisingly common indoors and outdoors despite its near complete lack of redeeming features. Indoors, fancy contractors seem to prefer copper and less fancy contractors seem to prefer PEX. Those fancy copper-using contractors seem to mostly mess u…
Landscape irrigation isn't that common in a domestic setting here. We get plenty of rain normally, but in the (increasingly common) periods of drought, most people just let their lawns dry out and manually water the flowers. Domestic fire sprinklers are also, sadly, quite uncommon. They've started to become more common in flats, particularly since Grenfell, but still, I've never had cause to touch the pipework for on…
John Guest has been making what seem to be very nice push-to-connect fittings in the UK for a long time. I’ve only used the US versions, and I’ve never seen one fail. If you avoid putting bending stress on them, they seem quite secure.
John Guest also has some very nice “ProLock” build-your-own-manifold fittings.
For what it’s worth, there are a couple of applications for which plastic or stainless steel are the only credible choices. Carbonated water is dangerous when in contact with copper or brass, and boiler condensate (which is basically carbonated water) will rapidly destroy copper or brass. So your boiler condensate drainage system generally ought to be made entirely of plastic.
I’ve personally had some rather impressive failures of copper pipe due, I think, to aggressive water at excessive velocity. Copper’s ability to resist corrosion is finicky.
Re: Everyday uses for PVC water pipe
#47To not highlight the power of heating PVC pipe to conform into any shape you want is to kind of miss half the PVC story. You can do without unions altogether by just heating one end enough to flare it, then slide the other pipe into the flare while heating more to let it conform and produce a union lap joint in-situ. Mastering heating is key to avoiding wasting money on tons of adapters which rarely even produce exac…
It's a useful technique, but part of the fun of PVC is the limited degrees of freedom. It's like autocorrect in real life!
It tends to not produce very nice looking results because it's mostly right angles, but that's doesn't matter as much if you're using it as a frame and keeping it hidden.
3D printing also greatly expands the possibilities of pipe.
Re: Everyday uses for PVC water pipe
#48Folks on YouTube cut, heat, and flatten PVC and then scratch build scale models out of it. This working excavator is rather extraordinary. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qam0DmWq_No&pp=ygUTcHZjIHBpcGU...
That's amazing. Some kid from some small town in Northern Vietnam, who is a genius.
Re: Everyday uses for PVC water pipe
#49I made a vocal booth out of PVC. Easy and cheap way to build a small, lightweight structure.
Re: Everyday uses for PVC water pipe
#50Making cool stuff out of cheap materials is great, but as I understand it, PVC itself is nasty stuff (even compared with other plastics) that we should probably be avoiding if we can. I'm not sure what would work as a good general-purpose replacement for PVC for making things out of though. I'm not sure if ABS is available in the narrow diameters that PVC is. Pex is more bendy. Bamboo is strong, but not uniform. Wood…
Is that true for PEX too? If so what's the alternative for piping?