alt Hacker NewsI love exposed everything in construction. Every plumbing and electrical problem that required me to call someone involved the thing being hidden for aesthetic reasons.
I'm currently in an old house in Vietnam and I had to add exposed PVC piping to route around a leak inside a wall that was also feeding mold.
Half of the work involved each time I call someone is understanding the hidden stuff + getting stuff out of the way to see the hidden stuff.
"Engineering types" have built much of the world most of us actually live in. Yet a core piece of engineering——maintainability——is pathologically persistent.
My dad, who has been a carpenter for over 50 years used to rail against boxing in pipes.
"Once upon a time people were just glad to have running water, now it has to arrive by magic"
In his house there is a duct behind the skirting boards upstairs. You can fish a wire to most places from there.
His other pet hate was glued down cupboard flooring. Squeaky floors were a common complaint in new houses. It was normally caused by not levelling the first floor joists properly (levelling the tops is the correct way), and just dropping them on the walls. The solution industry came up with was to glue the tounges and grooves together, and later to glue the boards to the joists as well. This is a big problem if you need to take up the floor for a leaking pipe. Whereas before you just cut the tongue of a board with a circular saw, pulled it up, and put a noggin under the joint, now you have to destroy a board, and try and buy a similar one