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The sewer lines all join together... ... and then exit out the back of the house, ready for connection to the septic tank: The article How Power Distribution Grids Work goes into extensive detail on how power gets from the power plant to your house. The purpose of the electrical system in a house is to distribute the power safely to all of the different rooms and appliances. The electrician for this house first placed all of the boxes for electrical outlets, lights and switches: Then he ran wires from the fuse box to each box and between boxes. Here's what the fuse box looked like once he got done: Wires were first run through to the boxes. A lot of drilling is necessary, both down into the crawl space and up into the ceiling, as well as through studs to run wires between boxes: Wires are then pulled through the boxes, clipped and capped: This shot shows the water line for the refrigerator's ice maker as well as the refrigerator's electrical line. Note the use of metal reinforcing plates at all holes (also visible in the shot of the fuse box above): The purpose of insulation is to lower the heating and cooling costs for the house by limiting heat transfer through the walls and the ceiling. The insulation process starts by installing foam channels in the eaves: These channels guarantee that air will be able to flow from the soffit vents to the ridge vents. Without these channels, insulation tends to expand into the eaves and block the soffit vents. This house uses standard fiberglass insulation throughout: Notice that over the insulation is a thin plastic vapor barrier. The idea behind the vapor barrier is to keep moisture that develops inside the house inside. Without the barrier, here is what happens inside the wall in winter: Warm, moist air moves through the drywall and into the insulated wall cavity; at some point inside the cavity it becomes cold enough for the moisture to condense, soaking the insulation. The vapor barrier prevents this process. In older homes, the siding and sheathing were so loose that air easily migrated out before the moisture condensed, but that is no longer the case so the barrier is essential. The fascia boards are perpendicular to the roof. The soffit is perforated so that air can flow into the attic and up through the ridge vents to ventilate the attic. In this shot, part of the soffit is in place, while part is awaiting installation. Note that all exposed fascia wood is capped with a sheet of painted aluminum that was bent into shape on the site: At this point, the house is "dried in," meaning that it is completely protected from rain. Now interior work can begin. Let's say you want to put a toilet in a house. Two-hundred or 300 years ago this was not an option -- everyone used outhouses. If you visit the governor's mansion in Williamsburg, VA, you will see that in the 1700s even England's high colonial governor used a pair of three-holer outhouses located at the back of the formal garden. Eventually, public water supplies and pressurized well systems allowed people to have indoor plumbing, and this allowed for the addition of indoor toilets. A toilet has to flush somewhere, so sewer systems evolved. Why can't you run the sewer line from a toilet or a sink out of the side of the house so it spills on the ground? That certainly would be easy and inexpensive, but people learned fairly quickly that human waste spilled on the ground smells bad and leads to incredible disease problems. Septic tanks and sewer systems take care of this. The uniform plumbing code lists hundreds of rules for septic-tank installation. These rules ensure that tanks work properly over many years. Once you have a septic tank in place, you can add sewer lines from the sink or toilet to the septic tank. Say you tried this approach: The problem with this approach is that as the septic tank fills up with stuff, it produces a rather malodorous cloud of fumes. These fumes float from the septic tank up the sewer line to the sink and into the bathroom. Therefore, plumbing codes require a "P-trap" at every drain opening, as shown here: You may have wondered why you find these funny loops of pipe under every sink in your house. The idea is that water gets trapped in the "P." This water blocks the fumes from the septic tank and keeps them from entering the bathroom. Unfortunately, a P-trap alone does not solve the problem because it turns out that the fumes in a septic tank are under pressure. The fumes simply bubble through the water in the trap and cause the same problem.
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