Hacker News Reader

Comment by zzzoom | Hacker News Reader

I live in a country that uses the metric system. Water and gas pipe diameters are in inches. Nothing breaks because there aren't any competing standards.

View on HN

What country is that? Here in The Netherlands there's at least 3 entirely different standards for household water and gas pipes (and I know Germany's much the same).

There's BSP (imperial), but be careful, it's not the diameter that's in inches, it's the inner diameter.

Then there's the common 15mm and 22mm copper water and gas pipes, and Alpex 16mm and 20mm.

Argentina. I'm pretty sure that gas installations wouldn't pass inspection with non-standard pipes. You could probably use whatever you want for water pipes.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but some quick searching seems to suggest that it's just as much of mess in Argentina as here ;-)

https://www.totaline.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/17-Ca...

My Spanish is rather bad, but I think this:

> Los tubos son producidos según los estándares establecidos por la norma internacional ASTM B88 y B88M.

Says that ASTM B88 and it's metric equivalent are accepted. As you'll see from the listed dimensions the latter is truly metric, while the former is imperial.

The regulations [1] list national standard NAG E-209 [2] for copper gas pipes, which is metric based on ASTM B88M.

[1] https://www.enargas.gob.ar/secciones/normativa/pdf/normas-di... [2] https://www.enargas.gob.ar/secciones/normativa/pdf/normas-te...

The huge size of the US market has led to internationalization of the inch to some extent. In Japan televisions are sold with a size in inches even though inches aren’t really used for anything else I’m aware of.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com