[arsome]

> And here I am, avoiding downloading things on cell service because it might negatively impact other people around me.

You paid for that service, they should be able to provide it to you. If it negatively impacts other users, that's the provider's fault.

[londons_explore]

I think the same whenever I turn on my gardening watering system at 7am and the whole 250 person street group chat starts complaining about lower water pressure and the fact nobody can have a shower.

But, I'm not selfish so I just water the garden at 4am now.

[FireBeyond]

As a firefighter...

If your neighborhood's water pressure is affected by you running a garden watering system that most likely maxes out at 15 gallons/minute, then you have a serious problem, god help you if there's a structure fire in the neighborhood.

Seriously though, if you're not just exaggerating to make an example, contact your town/city/whatever Department of Works, something is seriously wrong.

[londons_explore]

London (UK) has deliberately low water pressures because the pipe network has a lot of leaks, and the lower the pressure the less water leaks out.

It's low enough that some appliances like dishwashers and washing machines give 'water supply' errors unless you run them overnight. Some houses use pressure boosting pumps to get water to the top floor.

Apparently fixing the leaks is expensive and it's free to just lower the pressure and pass the problem onto householders.

[Scoundreller]

A kinda rule of thumb is that municipal water systems lose 10% of their water through various small leaks. Water is generally cheap and your bill is more for maintaining the capital cost itself rather than gathering/processing the water.

I also use this analogy for smuggling and the resources spent trying to stop it: if 10% gets lost/intercepted/“leaked”, the smugglers just produce and send 11% more and demand is met. You can change the numbers but it doesn’t change the result.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Now do that math for the US southwest, where water is ridiculously cheap and also severely limited ....

[kortilla]

It’s not severely limited, that’s why it’s cheap even ignoring people with huge water grants and purchasing on the open market.

Using the entire annual flow of the Colorado river doesn’t mean it’s severely limited. It just means society isn’t stupid and will use the excess to fill sunny deserts to grow crops.

As long as there are crops grown anywhere between Phoenix and LA, water isn’t severely limited.

[rurp]

Yeah we should probably stop subsidizing the heaviest water users. Instead we get high profile efforts that get a lot of attention and only save a token amount of water.

[shiroiushi]

So I guess London is just screwed if there's another big fire.

[londons_explore]

By law, houses must be built with fireproof (ie. Brick) walls between them, so a fire will not spread from one house to the next. This gives them a distinctive look [1].

There are no timber frame buildings, not any with flammable roofs like thatch or shingles.

They aren't going to make the mistakes of the great fire again!

It seems to work - I have never seen any fire burn more than one building.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/149wg3o/why_do_lond...

[shiroiushi]

Very interesting. Still, you'd think they'd put a little more effort into having a modern, high-pressure plumbing system in their main city.

[DidYaWipe]

He DIDN'T pay.

[lencastre]

But did you give? You gotta give? See, it’s completely user funded!