Hacker News Reader

Comment by diggernet | Hacker News Reader

Can you imagine the cost of retrofitting a city with a second water distribution system?

Sure: its already done many places. Look up "purple pipe" systems.

As far as money, here is a recent addition where 2.5 miles cost $17.5M: https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/05/05/apple-campus-and-area...

Its expensive, but maybe less expensive than you'd think. The goal is to connect large commercial users, not individual households.

Interesting, hadn't heard of those.

But that $17.5M seems to be mostly pump stations and running the pipe along a road. I was thinking more of getting from that pipe into all the existing buildings and houses, and to the various places it is used (I assume primarily toilets).

On the other hand, I agree with the throwaway... Bring me some nice fiber along with that purple pipe!

You don’t want purple pipe in the house, just at the street for your irrigation.

I think the cost/benefit for purple pipe is generally not worthwhile, but I'm often in favor because dig projects have a secondary effect of giving cities opportunity to upgrade telecom/fiber infrastructure.

As others have said - we already have it. I literally have it in my street, but it can only be connected to by commercial or city (think schools) entities. So the incremental cost of connecting me and my neighbors is very small and allows amortizing the original investment over even more customers. Capacity might be a question, but from what I’ve seen it’s the same size as the water main.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com