When Did You Get Indoor Plumbing?

We had an outhouse growing up, and a chamber pot in the "bathroom". The outhouse was about 200 feet from the back door at the back of our garden. Walking 200 feet at three in the morning when it is pitch black in the country, and the temperature is 20 degrees F is no fun. We also took baths in a galvanized washtub in the back yard. We finally moved from that farm and got indoor plumbing when I was 9 years old.

I see indoor plumbing as a convenience, at the expense of having to pay for an infrastructure that, while necessary for city living, is a ridiculous system for the country.

thanks.

My wife & I had just talked about some of these conditions with out 17 & 19 year old nieces this last weekend.

So where was this farm? Couldn't have been in Florida as global warming hasn't been going on that long.

"...got indoor plumbing when I was 9 years old" - About what year would that have been?

1968. I was born in 1959.

I grew up in rural Florida. We always had indoor plumbing from my humble beginning (1962).

I recall in '74 getting central AC and wall-to-wall carpeting over our terrazzo floor.

I was born in 62 too. We always had indoor plumbing. I can't remember if we had AC or not, in Fla. where I was born. We never had it after moving from there. An attic fan was it. The entire family watched TV on a little black and white TV with an 8" screen until the early 70's. And I can't remember how old I was when I realized that there were other colors besides avacado green, orange and gold................and that shag carpeting wasn't the only kind available.

WOW I didn't know you lived in MY house growing up.

AHHHH the shag carpet Baby..........got my little toe broken that way when my sister dropped her gum in the carpet and I was running in the house. Snap and roll it was.

I know, I know stop running in the house!!

Kramarat, you've got two years on me. My parents house always had indoor plumbing, my uncle was a plumber. Right next to my bed, the plaster was cracking off of the lathe strips. My dad's solution was to put paneling over it. No, really, the 'fine wood grain' stuff they had back then.

As for the TV, we had a black and white unit that died in the early 70's and was replaced by my cousin's hand me down B & W. My siblings & I loved to go to my grandparents house (in Philadelphia) because they had a color TV! My parents finally got a color unit in '83 after I'd already moved out.

I was probably 30 before I realized what they meant in the Wizard of Oz when they said, "...a horse of a different color!" It was always gray to me.

Oh yeah! I forgot about paneling............................just the solution for that wreck rec room in the basement.....................complimented the orange shag carpet perfectly.

I didn't mind the B&W TV. We only got 3 stations, and there wasn't anything worth watching until Star Trek came out.

But how did you know who was wearing a red shirt each episode?

They were the ones that never talked.

By about 73 we had a color TV and I was in rerun heaven.

How far we've come....

Born '47. Grew up very poor. Rural Arkansas. House on the side of a hill. Hand pump outside and an outhouse until 1955. Then we converted a closet into a "bathroom". Our rich Texas uncle gave us a sink and toilet and we managed to shoehorn a bath tub into the closet. If you sat on the commode and leaned forward, you'd hit your head on the sink.

We had electricity courtesy of REA for forever but no phone till '56 and then it was an EIGHT party line.

We always ate well, grew beef cattle and chickens and had a garden. My mom sewed all our clothes and we were always clean.

My family still owns the farm, but the amenities have improved.

I forgot about the party lines. I grew up with one. We only had to dial the last 4 digits until sometime in the early 80's

As far back as I can remember (late 1950s) we always had indoor plumbing and a private phone line, in northeastern Ohio. My great-grandparents in south-central PA had a large farm with an outhouse. There was a kitchen sink with an old-fashioned pump-handle spigot that was fed by a well. The oven was wood-burning. They had electricity for some lights and a small refrigerator. They had a party-line telephone.

Born 1948. We always had indoor plumbing, but our neighbor's mountain cabin had (and still has) an outhouse. I remember 4-party phone lines, and then the early phone exchanges with two-letter names followed by 5 digits. My grandparents's rural home had indoor plumbing on septic, but a hand-crank phone with an Ernestine on the other end. The grandfolks got a TV in 1953, but we didn't until 1965, when my high-school Contemporary World Problems class required the watching of certain news programs.

Those were the days, my friend; we thought they'd never end...

We did have running cold water in the apartment building built in 1906 with single layer brick and no insulation. The water closet was literally a converted closet right next to front door. To take a bath we took the bus to the public bath house in another town. Alternate days for men and women. The 'kitchen' consisted of a single gas ring for one pot. Until I was 8 my mother used to fill the sink with hot water to wash me. I was small enough to fit in sink. Heat in apartment was a coal stove in living room only. I remember condensation on interior walls of my bedroom was 1 cm thick.

When we arrived in America in 1958 amazingly we got our own telephone and running hot water. Also a refrigerator

By 1964 at age 15 I cobbled together a b/w TV from scrapped units in junk heap at repair shop where I had a week-end job. Only rich relatives back home in old country had a TV in those days. ( smile)

Born in 1948 on a farm in southeastern Alabama. REA power arrived about 1938. Indoor plumbing about 1957. Wood heating till about 1958, replaced by propane space heaters. Black and white TV arrived about 1958. Air conditioning arrived about 1970. Party line phone arrived about 1962 (great boon to all the gossiping old ladies on the circuit). You can do what you have to in order to live. We didn't have to worry about obesity or poor physical conditioning.

I haven't the experience like this

I remember when we visited my aunt in the 70s. She still had an outhouse. She also lived in the middle of nowhere. The family still owns the property the only thing left of the house are the four outside red granite walls and fireplace but the outhouse is still there. I doubt if its the same one but sure looks like it.

For indoor plumbing she had a hand pump in the kitchen. She had electricity but heated with wood.

Believe it or not in the city limits of St. Louis you still occasionally will find a house with a stone foundation & dirt floor in the basement.

In 1950s there were no indoor plumbing,the water well,kitchen and toilet were detached. But as in tropical countries climatic conditions are not severe we didn't feel it. In door plumbing came may be in 1940s to big cities and gradually spread to urban and rural areas. First only rich people or persons with a monthly salary had indoor plumbing. Even today in some areas people use common bath-wells for bathing and a small well in their premises for drinking water.

Really interesting, many thanks for posting.

Our fathers used animal droppings(cattle/goat) and leaves with small branches as fertliser for vegetable cultivation. For rice cultivation no fertiliser was used in 1950s. Farm lands were ploughed with oxen. Tractor was getting introduced. Pumping water for irrigation done by set of steel buckets connected to a chain driven by oxen by going round the well. Rice was cultivated using rainwater and crops failed if either no rain or excess rain. Farmers went to field before sunrise to irrigate tobacco,trapioca, grams, egg plant,okra,sweet potato etc and about 8am many went for a second job.

Gasoline driven water pump too used by some.

Tin roof, forgot how that sounds. Milking cows before and after school.

And the TOTAL lack of noise. No one lived within miles of us so you could hear a car coming up the dirt road forever. Sometimes the only car we'd see for days would be the mail carrier.

No airplanes, either. First memory of airplane was the old slow B-36 bomber and very few of those.

You could hear the revenuer a cummin up and kill the still!

Amen, and thanks for the ride !

and they say time-travel is not possible...

hard work was rewarded,and a handshake was as good as a contract. I wish I had been around to see that. ('73 model.)

When I was a kid, as well as most of the people here, judging from the posts, hard work was the only means to a reward. There was no other way.

Stop it! You're making me homesick!

If/when my wife and I ever get to retire, we're headed back out into the Oklahoma countryside as fast as we can go. Two of the must-haves on my list are at least one bedroom with a tin roof and a screened in front porch. I don't care about the rest of the house but someday I'm gettin' my tin roof and a place to sit and watch the world go by.

Oh, and a storm cellar--for those truly wondrous Oklahoma storms.

Lots of good memories.

Thanks for sharing, everyone.

We had indoor plumbing when I was a kid in the 50's. It was call a tin sink with a picture pump that pumped the coldest water known to man. My mother used to heat the water on the only heat we had at the time in the kitchen, our trusty pot belled stove. Out house was a 200 foot run to the south from the kitchen door. Barn had electricity though, we used for lighting so we could milk the cows by hand.

Seems funny but my cousin bought the place years ago and never did change it. Still does not have indoor plumbing!

I was born in northern Ontario in 1968 . We got indoor plumbing in 1979. Moved to Iqualuit NWT in 1980. There we had a "honey" bucket that the town picked up twice a week in the "honey" wagon.(permafrost doesn't allow underground plumbing) potable water is also delivered by truck to a holding tank). Grey water went out the back to open air. Moved to Dawson City Yukon in 1984. Cabin and outhouse for all of that time. 1st home with both indoor plumbing AND toilet was when I moved to newyork in 1998!

Born October 1946 London, later moved to Waltham Cross till 52, then Waltham Abbey till 63 when I joined the RN.

My family were relativly well off as my Father (an electrical engineer) started a small electrical contracting company at the end of 1945. I was born in west London, we had some sort of small aoartment, never seen it though. After I had been about 6 months on the planet, my father bought a new, so called "control(led) house". The people we sold it to in 1952 are still in it the last time I checked about 10 years ago.....

No central heating, only coal fired fireplaces in the lounge and dining room, coal fired boiler for the kitchen and hot water......no heating upstairs, winter ice on both sides of the single pane glass. Two outhouses, big garden, well built garage of brick (my father built it), I put all the nuts and washers that held the roof panels on at about 4 years old.

My mother had kittens!!!

Lead based paint, which I had nibble on at some time and got lead poisoning! Blue turds!!! At about 2 years old.....

Never got taught how to clean my teeth properly, lost a lot of milk teeth to the dentist, gas to knock me out...sh*t!! I improved with the second set!!! Still got most of them, half are now crowned/capped.

Rationing books still in use till around 1952, you could only buy what you had points for, even if you had money.....

London and many areas of the UK was still having huge areas of bombed out houses and factories. They were not completely cleared till sometime in the '60s.

Temporary houses were everywhere till well into the 70's....

No safety belts in cars. No motorways anywhere till about 1957.

We had a bathroom with a seperate toilet upstairs, advanced for the time, but primitive in comparison to today.

We had bad yellow fogs/smogs in winter due to burning coal for heating. You could literally not see father than your outstretched hands. The clean air act of 1956 sorted that out...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_1956

Trains ran on coal and steam, roaring monsters that I loved. Though hanging your head out of the carriage window often filled your eyes with scratchy soot!!!

In the early 50's most steam engines were worn out and noisy from a lack of maintenance in the war......really loud clanking at the bottom of the garden as the line passed our house only 100 yards away!! On their way to Norwich and the east coast.

Milk was still delivered daily, as were newspapers and bread. First B/W TV with one channel in 1953 for the Coronation. First in the road. There was only one channel, what is today called BBC1.

Days out meant taking all your food and drink, not paying for anything there.....long traffic jams on holiday days....

Restaurant visits were very occasional and only to Turkish ones so that my Father could keep his Turkish language up to date (Sent to Turkey in 1941 till 45 by Winston C., out of uniform.). I ate hot curries from 2 years old, still like it!!

Policement walked or biked around the town, only CID had cars. They knew you by your first name....

No sirens for Police cars and ambulances - Bells!!

Dogs allowed to sh*t anywhere, not that there were many around.

Labourer's wages at about 10 pounds a week. One pound fifty a week for a council house rent....

Mother had no driving license, so from about 10 bike everywhere or bus......or walk.

Small shops at the bottom of the street for lots of things, no supermarkets till around 1960 or so in our area.

I've forgotten so much, sorry.......

After reading many of the posts, I have come to the conclusion that both of my grandfathers were ahead of their time. I was born in 1955, and even though both sets of my grandparents lived on rural farms, I can never remember a time when they did not have electricity, telephone, and indoor plumbing. Mother said that REA came through in the 30's and installed electricity. It wasn't long after that when folks in Alabama started rigging electric pumps to their water wells.

As for heat, one grandfather had a coal fired pot-belly stove that heated most of the house, while my other grandfather used one large fireplace until well into the 1980's. I heated the kitchen, and family room, while the bedrooms were unheated. And there was a small gas space heater in the bathroom.

I was born in '36' and we were raised till 1950 with an outhouse. When I was 12 momma said if I didn't stop going to the outhouse so much I'ed go blind. Then in 50 we got indoor plumbing and she said the samething about the new shower. I'm 75 now and these damn pills have caused me to wear glasses..

Great thread, great memories!!

Surprised at all the farm "kids" we have in our group!

Indoor plumbing came in 1965. Also got an indoor commode with the flush tank up high with the pull chain that year.

No telephone until around 1968. Uncle Leo would say "don't need one of them". Aunt Emily insisted so we finally got a hand crank party line.

We did have electricity as far back as I can remember but only a single clear pull chain bulb per room. Entertainment was the Zenith.

We had a coal/wood fired furnace in the basement and openings cut in the ground and second level floors with grates over them for heat to travel to the upstairs. Cooked on this also.

Early food refrigeration was a concrete tub in the basement that had well water circulated through it. The food was kept in metal covered pans that would float around on the water. The whole thing would be covered with burlap blankets.

First TV I remember was a Zenith color TV around 1970. Have no idea how we afforded that. Every time CBS, channel two would go into a commercial break they would show this animated peacock unfolding it's tail. EVERY TIME this occurred Dad or Uncle Leo would yell for us all to come to the "sitting room" to watch the colors.

The farm was vegetables only. Lots of hand sowing, weed hoeing, hand picking and packing.

Among the many veggies we grew, we grew sweet corn in 4 to 6 plantings through the summer.

Had a vegetable stand out on the road that my cousin and I tended when we were not doing other choirs. Rest of the produce went into town on Wednesday's and Saturday's to the local grocery.

Had some cows for milk and meat and pigs for meat.

Like many here, dirt poor growing up. We lived off of what we grew, slaughtered and hunted but we always ate very well.

Ah yes, great memories indeed!

It's interesting, that now that we have everything, our fondest memories are of the times when we had very little.

Man, ain't that the truth

When I was three, 1955, we lived on a small farm in WV. Bucket and rope hand crank well. And an outhouse.

Heated bath water and cooked on wood burning stove. Bathed in large wash tub. Heated house with fireplace coal. Cold cellar in hillside out back.

Moved in town that year. First time I saw a toilet, and I was afraid that I would fall off.

Had water heater, gas heat, faucet H/C water. And TV. No phone. City slicker heaven.

Hello DDK,

The house we lived I know didn't have an indoor toilet when I was born in 1952, but I remember having same when I was about 5 years old. I have no recollection of it being installed, just the time before, and the time after.

The best memories of the outhouse regard my father. He had a phobia about snakes, and you already know where this story is going . Apparently, according to my mother, he was once 'stuck' in the outhouse for hours because a garter snake decided to plant himself just under the door. Years later, I used to wonder if he had an exceptionally good BM that day, having the sh*t scared out of him .

Okay, back to the house. I don't remember a time when there was not running water in the kitchen, but I also remember them building a new pump house a little later. New well??? I have no idea. I do remember in the winter when the pipes were sometimes frozen.

I can't remember a time when we didn't have forced-air heat, and fuel oil was the energy source du jour. We must have had lousy insulation, though. I recall one morning when the tank must have run dry during the night. The house was FREEZING. I woke to find myself buried under piles of blankets and even overcoats, my mother trying to keep me warm.

Electricity I always remember, but we weren't that rural ... only a couple of miles from our small town. I still remember the REMC jingle, "who turned on the lights in the country, for a better life to be ...". I often wonder when most of the houses were finally wired for electricity?

Recently, my wife and I had an interesting evening when our power was off because of a particularly heavy snow. We spent the evening in lamp-light, played board games, and actually talked . I think maybe we should purposely turn off the power now and then, just to 're-connect'.

Thanks DDK for evoking some good memories, and a jog to the brain to remind us it wasn't that long ago.

Kind regards ...

Primitive man gathered around the fire at night with his family and told stories and talked about the past.Nights were cold, and the whole family slept together, with children at the foot, and adults at the other end, keeping each others' feet warm.

As he progressed, he gathered around the radio with his family, and listened to stories and talked about the future.The whole family still slept together for warmth,except in the cities where they had central heat.

Further progress finds man gathered with his family in front of a TV, and no one is talking to anyone, hypnotized by the faint blue glow of the black and white images on the screen.

A little further along now, and the images are in full color, and the family members become virtual strangers to each other.

Another generation, and people are walking around talking to something called a blue tooth, but rarely talk to one another eye to eye.

Previous generations were deemed crazy if they talked to themselves.Now everyone is crazy, and nobody notices.

The rain that once fell clean and pure from the sky is now poisoned by acid, and instead of nourishing the trees, it is killing them.

The air and water has become so polluted that the frogs and bees are dying.

Man will soon follow them, and some other species will gather around a campfire and tell stories, long after the world wide glaciers have scrubbed the planet clean of past mistakes.

Try,try again.

The Earth has plenty of time.

On a happier note:

I'd recommend going camping with the family, for anyone that doesn't do it. Leaving all tech toys behind of course. Returning to the good times doesn't have to be hard, or expensive. Sometimes we do it in the back yard....................just talk and look at the stars.

I have taken the wife back packing on Isle Royale (lake superior).

With no electronics. One week of sweat and scenery. We have done it twice since I've turned 50.

We're talking of doing this summer.

My 4 year old is already talking about an Ipad.

The only thing she's getting for Christmas that requires electricity is a lite bright.............remember those. The rest of the stuff requires her to use her brain and imagination to have fun with..................................outside!!

Well i was born in 55 and grew up with indoor plumbing. Father had just bought a brand new house.

I do remember the many visits to the grandparents. Both had no indoor plumbing.

Heat at one was an old oil fired stove in the living room. My great uncle didn't have indoor plumbing put in that house until sometime in the early to mid 80's. Don't know when that house was built. It had been in maternal grandmothers family for about 10 generation. Foundation was field stone and had root cellar. The attic structure was out of rough logs about 2" diameter covered with tin.

The grand mother had and old wood burning cook stove in the kitchen/living room. Would like to have that old stove. Haven't seen another like it. It was big, 8 burners with space for griddle in the middle and an oven to one side. Mom had 11 siblings so guess grandmother needed a big stove. The house burned down in the early 60's. The new house had all the amenities.

I still remember those ice cold seats in January. And the story by my great grandmother about the licking my dad got for painting the seat with black strap molasses at school. The nun that sat down on it was not too happy with him.

"...the licking my dad got for painting the seat with black strap molasses at school".

Wow, did your dad have a death wish or something. Brave (or foolish) enough to do that at school, but to the nuns no less.

That was almost a joke in German as "leaking" and "licking" are basically the same word.

This means that in a German joke, when a Nun is asked why she is sitting on the room radiator, she says its because the plumber had said that it "leaks/licks"......

Whew!... I was born in 1937 in what was once known as Rhodesia... Plumbing?; didn't even know the word in those days... Our bulk household water was hauled a mile from the river in two 55gal barrels mounted on an axle and pulled by four harnessed donkey's... Drinking water was carried on a native mans' head in a three gallon bucket from a spring a quarter mile from the house... Male family members went to the "bush" with some strips of paper, while the female members were allowed the use of a small outhouse that contained a seat, a bucket, and a sandbox with a scoop (a layer of sand made a difference!).... One of my chores was to empty the bucket, which meant digging a hole near a peach tree and getting rid of the mess made by the womenfolk...

I "bailed" in my twenties and went to sea on a sailboat for the next forty years or so... Water was carried in tanks under the floorboards; toilet was the "bucket and chuckit" method...

Ten years ago I took up residence in Manitoba Canada on a quarter section with an eighty-year-old log cabin and... you guessed it... An outhouse a couple of hundred feet from the house across a gulley that got pretty slippery in winter... One learns pretty quick to take a newspaper and box of matches to the outhouse... A couple of sheets of burning paper dropped down the hole before one sat down did wonders for comfort!... Heat was solely from a wood burning stove in the middle of the cabin... We did have electricity though!

Today we have a well, plumbing and, wonders of wonders, a boiler feeding 800 feet of Pex under the floor... No more frozen floors... No more frozen toothpaste, etc... Life is good!... Yeah! I can live without oil...

Hi there Cap'n. Also born in Rhodesia (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia) '51 vintage.

I have lived in houses such as described by HiTekRedNek...where you smell the ozone of the coming rain, and anticipate the roar on the roof, or hail creating a cacophony on the tin such that communication inside is next to impossible, and listening to a radio was not an option. It was quality family time. Very nostalgic...we did have indoor plumbing though...

Lots of good memories.

Thanks for sharing.

Hoping to hear from more members on other continents.

In Europe we had PAL colour TV from about 69, what a difference it made.

In 82 I bought my first colour TV with stereo (a lot of money) in Cologne, Gerany. I set it up, but no stereo. Rang the shop and complained, the answer was simple, nobody was transmitting stereo signals yet!!!

6 months later, we received our first stereo transmission......

When did Colour TV reach the USA, sorry, Never The Same Color twice?

Unless I missed it along the way, did anyone mention coal oil lamps? I used one to read by at night before the REA got electric lines strung out into the Oklahoma backwoods. And using the outhouse in the winter time was no party, either. The kitchen water was only 'running' when you poured it from the bucket into the sink, after carrying it in from the well.

But sleeping outdoors under the stars in the summertime was 'way safer than it is today. And you could hitchhike to the next town over without ending up a missing person. And vice versa, you could (generally speaking) offer a stranger a ride without ending up a missing person.

And a 'timeout' (to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy) was when someone cared enough to take 'time out' of their busy day to tear you up when you misbehaved. Many a valuable lesson was taught and learned that way.

Hmmmm! Coal Oil lamps?... We had no such thing as coal oil, but used what we called paraffin (kerosine on this side of the Atlantic)... It was burned either by wick type lamps or pressure fed types ie. Coleman... Our most dangerous, but brightest form of lighting however, was from our "carbide" lamps... These lamps were in two parts; the top was a little water tank, which dripped into the bottom container which held a few lumps of "carbide" (calcium carbonate)... The resulting acetelyne gas was sent to a jet protruding from the center of a polished reflector mounted on the side of the bottom tank and ignited... Problems were mostly encountered when the unit was shaken and the illuminating flame became much elongated; sometimes three feet long!... Thatched houses were vulnerable, to say the least!... In addition to the hand-held unit detailed above, we had a variation (modified miners lamp) which hung on ones belt and fed the jet and reflector via a rubber tube... reflector was strapped to ones head and the light beam was used to illuminate the sights of a rifle and show up eye reflections of the game we hunted at night... We ate all we killed rather than slaughter valuable livestock...

Many a house was burned down with these contraptions! :-)

Actually, now that you mention it, "coal oil" might just have been the local Okie name for kerosene. The lamps were as you described, with a heavy glass lower section that held the oil and a tall, sort of fluted section that one removed to light the wick. I've got two on top of my bookcase to this day, just in case all else fails.

I'd forgotten about the carbide lamps, too. I think hunters used them some but I never got to tinker with one. My buddies and I got in enough trouble with Black Cat firecrackers, let alone anything else.

Born 1944

No electricity.

Bath room had basin and bath with cold water.

Long drop outside. I was actually scared of a flush toilet when I saw one,

A small plantation for energy needs.

Had a crystal set for radio,

Party telephone line with crank dialing.

Coleman lantern and candles for lightning.