I muttered previously about the unnecessarily massive notch that the plumbers cut into the joists in the library when they ran new bathroom plumbing in the 1960s. I wanted to figure out why they would do this. It seems that the original plumbers had a less than brilliant idea - they ran the plumbing through the concrete that was used as a bed for the tile in the bathroom. Doh! While this may have made for a more solid structure initially, it didn't take into account that the plumbing would eventually fail and have to be replaced.
