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.

Specifically Belmont, MA, where Eagar lives. Used as an externality argument for why swage fittings displaced solder fittings even where the joint quality might be inferior.

One of the implications — we talked about externalities and costs — at least where Professor Eagar lives, in Belmont, if you want to solder, you have to get what's called a hot work permit by the city. With the hot work permit, if you're doing welding or things like that, there are sparks, so you have to get a special permit to do the work. The other thing you need to have is what's called a fire watch. So there are cost implications as well. You need to have somebody from the fire department, and you have to pay them, when you're soldering these joints — versus saying, I can go buy this at Home Depot or one of these major retailers, and all it is is a snap connection, and leave it in place. Cost really is the driver for a lot of the construction and joining activities.

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