People Have Been Trying To Reduce Their Utility Bills For Millennia

By: vivian on terça-feira, dezembro 13, 2016

Private access to water in ancient Rome was expensive. Homeowners who could afford running water paid for it based on the diameter of their access pipe. Unsurprisingly, people cheated. They often installed larger pipes than what had been paid for. This scam prompted the invention of the “calix” – a sleeved pipe which was put into the wall not by the homeowners, and which was decorated to prevent forgeries or alterations. Despite the calixes, crafty Romans still found a way to get their water cheaper. Some tried to steal water from the aqueducts directly, siphoning it off themselves or bribing the aquarii (specialized aqueduct workers) to siphon off water for them. All these practices were known as “fraus aquariorum” or plumbing fraud.

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