{"id":2099,"date":"2014-01-30T14:07:40","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T20:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=2099"},"modified":"2014-01-30T14:50:12","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T20:50:12","slug":"paksworld-plumbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=2099","title":{"rendered":"Paksworld Plumbing"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s nothing like real life to give a writer an idea for a story or blog post.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Like many people we sometimes have trouble with drains.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes a lot<\/em> of trouble with drains.<\/p>\n

\"kitchen-drain-house-to-yard092\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This unlovely sight is the drain from the kitchen to a holding tank (not yet excavated in this picture) about 12 feet from the house foundation.\u00a0\u00a0 The archaeological excavation going on here has revealed many interesting (and depressing) things about the original design and subsequent history of this presently nonfunctional drain, so of course I thought “Aha–a post on plumbing in Paksworld, just the thing.”\u00a0\u00a0 Where, if anywhere, in Paksworld, would you find something like this?<\/p>\n

Every human society,\u00a0 real or fictional, creates waste.\u00a0 Lots of waste.\u00a0 Lots of different kinds of waste.\u00a0 Some waste is biological: we eat, we excrete.\u00a0\u00a0 So do any animals we keep, either as pets or as work animals or food animals.\u00a0\u00a0 So do all the plants we cultivate, and all the activities we pursue in building, repairing, making, using the stuff of daily life.\u00a0 How societies handle waste reveals many things, including their attitude towards the waste itself and their attitude towards their environment in general.<\/p>\n

Paksworld started with four distinct human cultures (more developed, but from the beginning I had three in mind) with different attitudes towards waste removal and treatment.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Old Humans had a low-density culture,\u00a0 some even nomadic, with very small settled enclaves surrounded by open land.\u00a0\u00a0 Their technological level was just moving from stone tools to metal tools when the magelords arived.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Magelords had a history of densely settled population centers in Aare, with much more developed technologies (including magery) than Old Humans, and large-scale farming.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Seafolk, originally farmers and fishers on the coastal areas of the eastern continent, had a background of more population density than Old Humans, but their access to constantly moving water in large amounts changed how they handled waste.\u00a0\u00a0 The composite culture that resulted from magelord rule of Old Humans carried elements of both its ancestral cultures in the matter of waste–more mage-like in Tsaia, more Old Human-like in Fintha.\u00a0 The composite human culture of Lyona, however,\u00a0 has been influenced very strongly by elves, and its attitude towards waste would satisfy the most draconian environmentalist.<\/p>\n

In very-low-density populations,\u00a0 leaving bodily waste where it’s excreted has no real drawback, other than wolves knowing more about your habits than you might wish (since they will know what you ate, what your health status is, how fertile you are,\u00a0 if you’re pregnant, etc.)\u00a0\u00a0 Old Humans “knew” that human waste attracted bad spirits that could make you sick (especially the solid stuff) but also knew that urine could keep some wildlife away from their gardens.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nomadic Old Humans just went where and when they needed to.\u00a0 Those in villages refrained from doing so in their huts,\u00a0 although in severe weather they might use a pot indoors and then throw the contents out to freeze.\u00a0\u00a0 Every household was responsible for removing waste around that house;\u00a0 the waste was then removed to the communal pasture.<\/p>\n

Seafolk believed in the “dilution is the answer to pollution”\u00a0 theory of waste management.\u00a0 The western coast of the eastern continent has several fast-running rivers from the mountains behind down to the sea, and the sea–though lacking anything but a mild solar tide–does have currents.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Some of the coastline has marshy areas, where sediment from the mountains has built up sandy-muddy areas.\u00a0 When at sea, everything went over the side of the boat.\u00a0\u00a0 All gone, no worries.\u00a0\u00a0 On land,\u00a0 the settlements tended to be small, and waste was handled much as in Old Human settlements, although since pasture land was more limited, the “street cleaners” usually dumped it into the nearest marsh or rowed it a little ways offshore if they were right on the coast.<\/p>\n

Both of these cultures knew the important of clean water;\u00a0 neither culture allowed defecation or urination near their water source or into small streams.\u00a0\u00a0 Eventually, shortly before or just after the magelords invaded both cultures, they developed the “jacks”, a pit or trench (more commonly a pit)\u00a0 like that under an outhouse seen up to\u00a0 century ago.\u00a0\u00a0 The trench would be covered daily and a new section dug; the pit (deeper) w0uld have a structure over it to keep out rain.\u00a0\u00a0 By that time as well, wooden conduits, pipes, were used to bring water from streams to a constructed pool from which people dipped water.\u00a0 Wells were dug well away from waste pits, lined in stone, with stone coping above.<\/p>\n

Magelords, coming from a more tropical climate, were well aware of the disease problems inherent in dense populations and unsanitary waste handling.\u00a0\u00a0 In Aare,\u00a0 they had devised a system somewhere between Minoan and Roman in handling water acquisition, water transport, and water use both indoors and out for waste removal.\u00a0\u00a0 Mage abilities allowed methods that had to be changed as they lost their magery.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They did have pipes, mostly ceramic, and (early on) sections of pipe were multiplied with magery.\u00a0\u00a0 The houses of the wealthy had water piped in, controlled by a form of spigot,\u00a0 supplying water for either drinking\/cooking or waste removal.\u00a0\u00a0 They also had bath houses with water moving slowly through the pools where people bathed.\u00a0 In areas with abundant water,\u00a0 all waste water was channeled back into a large stream to flow away.\u00a0 In areas with less water,\u00a0 waste water went into a constructed marsh, where the upper end was untreated and contained wild plants, while the lower end grew crops.<\/p>\n

In the north, all the cultures had to deal with a period of hard freeze every winter, when pipes might freeze and burst, and for the magelords, the failure of their magery also forced changes.<\/p>\n

All the cultures but the elves handled kitchen waste and wastewater differently from urine and feces….they had the concept of “black water” (direct human waste) and “gray water” (water that’s been used, but isn’t full of feces or urine.)\u00a0 As a nuisance, it might draw flies, or animals to wallow in it, or smell worse than fresh, unused water, but it wasn’t a particular hazard.\u00a0 In cities,\u00a0 fancy homes of the rich and inns both tended to dig “kitchen pits” or “cooks-jacks” with waste piped directly from the kitchen into a purpose-built pit; this pit would be covered with a heavy wooden cover, and then a layer of earth to keep animals from dislodging the cover.<\/p>\n

By Paks’s day,\u00a0 some form of pipe for moving water was common in larger towns and cities in the Eight Kingdoms,\u00a0 mostly used for delivering water from streams to urban fountains where people came to get water for their household needs.\u00a0 In Fin Panir, the old magelord waste removal system still served much of the city, with a main sewer hollowed out from the palace complex down to the Honnorgat, with settling basins built into it.\u00a0 No other town or city in Fintha, however, had a similar sewer system. \u00a0\u00a0 But the Girdish are serious about cleanliness, so inns and taverns are required to provide public jacks with waste removal and cooks-jacks for their kitchens.<\/p>\n

In V\u00e9rella, the same, but waste removal in private houses varies with income and willingness–and as Arian noticed, the downstream end of V\u00e9rella is a scandal to anyone of elven blood…filthy and stinking.\u00a0 Clean water is piped into public fountains, but also into some other buildings–the palace, however, lost its piped system in the Girdish war, and now mostly relies on several wells and fountains within the complex.\u00a0\u00a0 There is a large cooksjacks for the palace kitchen,\u00a0 several old toilets in walls that lead to lower pits,\u00a0 chamber pots, and chair-toilets utilizing removable pots.\u00a0\u00a0 This waste is then put in one of five or six cesspits,\u00a0 which are cleaned out in rotation, with the waste from them removed to fields north of the city.\u00a0\u00a0 Other large towns\/cities in Tsaia also use ceramic pipe for water supply,\u00a0 and varieties of jacks for human waste and cooksjacks for kitchen waste.<\/p>\n

Chaya is constrained to the elven rules–in which water sources are sacred and pollution of them intolerable.\u00a0\u00a0 Water can be piped in, but not out except into carefully constructed containers.\u00a0\u00a0 The city’s human waste is distributed quarterly to different fields used for pasture (stage one and two) or grain (stage three). \u00a0 The taig, under elven influence, will decontaminate it if it’s presented in an acceptable form…the soil could be considered hyper-organic in that way and can process it completely well before that field is re-used for the purpose.<\/p>\n

So: what about that non-draining drain at our house?\u00a0 In that first picture you can see that the plastic pipe is broken and full of small roots.\u00a0 The pipe from under the house (metal) isn’t easy to see (a large root is in the way, for one thing) and it’s not clear that the larger metal segment whose original hoops have worn away is also clear.\u00a0\u00a0 Roots invading pipes are a problem everywhere that pipes and roots come near one another.\u00a0\u00a0 By severing the pipe near the metal segments, and then filling the sinks inside and pulling their plugs, we were able to test this morning and find out that the sinks empty normally now (but make a mudhole in the hole.)<\/p>\n

At the other end of this run,\u00a0 we now have part of the “cooksjack” excavated:<\/p>\n

\"kitchen-drain-grease-trap096\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is quite a large concrete structure with a heavy concrete lid, and an access for pumping it out.\u00a0\u00a0 When we pulled the broken PVC pipe away from it, this is what we found:<\/p>\n

\"kitchen-drain-trap-roots099\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yuck.\u00a0\u00a0 In pieces, the rootlet mass actually resembles peat moss, with that thin gray line of sludge on the bottom of the former pipe where actual dishwater tried to get through.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s quite possible that the grease trap (cooksjacks in Paksworld) is also full of roots.\u00a0 I hope not!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We will have to have it pumped out, at any rate.<\/p>\n

So, barring the concrete, you might find something like this on the other side of many a kitchen wall in Paksworld.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Where the cooksjacks is located under a courtyard with no trees, it probably has a longer life.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now that I think about it, this is a good reason for putting it under a paved yard.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s nothing like real life to give a writer an idea for a story or blog post.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Like many people we sometimes have trouble with drains.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes a lot of trouble with drains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,53],"tags":[108,112,12],"class_list":["post-2099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-background","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2099"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2105,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099\/revisions\/2105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}