Florida high-rise copper-plated stainless steel water piping failure

Early-1970s stainless industry response to copper price spike; copper plating with holidays caused focused galvanic attack; 40-story Florida condo perforated within 18 months. Tom did splash-line tests as junior faculty at $15/hr.

I've seen pits — I talked about the pits and my mother-in-law and the dinnerware. My thesis advisor had a situation over 40 years ago. When copper prices went up in the early 1970s, the stainless steel industry thought they had a great solution: use stainless steel for piping in a home. The problem is you can't easily solder to stainless steel unless you use a very aggressive flux. So they decided to plate the outside of the stainless steel with copper, and that way they could solder to the copper. That sounded great.