Lead-sealed water pipe failures

Student question prompt. Lead sealing arrived ~1900–1910; Tom has worked on lead-sealed water pipe failures from 90 years out.

Here are some pictures of things they dig up out of the Boston street. These are old gas pipes that were abandoned in the ground. This is just a cast iron sleeve with two pipes, and the whole thing is filled with oakum. This is a bell-and-spigot joint, also filled with oakum — they just stuff some old rope and tar in there.

Student: What about lead-sealed joints?

That didn't come along until around 1900, 1910. I've worked on water pipes that are lead-sealed that failed 90 years later. These were 1880s-type stuff. I wish I had taken a picture when I was down there — they had one that was even older, a wooden pipe. They'd just take a log. The original street lights — in order to pipe the gas down the street, they would take a log, gun-drill it, and put a hole in it. It might be a 6-inch diameter log with a 2-inch hole in it. You just hope it wouldn't rot away. They finally went to cast iron, and the cast iron lasts for a long time. Not that it doesn't leak at the joints, but that's another story.