Boston hot-work fire-watch regulation and building cost impact

Externality-of-regulation case. The 1978 lead-tin solder ban plus OSHA hot-work rules made plumbing soldering expensive enough to drive adoption of a $800-tool, $30-fitting mechanical seal.

Let me give you the one other externality, that I didn't even know about until they redid my office a couple of years ago. Usually when you put copper pipe in a building — for a heating system or a water system — you would solder it. Then in 1978 you couldn't use lead-tin solder. You had to get the lead out, and you had to start using tin-silver solders, tin-silver-antimony solders. They're okay, but they tend to leak a little bit more. The real problem, the thing that got expensive, is that over time they had enough plumbers burn down buildings while they were soldering things, that they started saying, you have to have a fire watch.