Friday, 2022-03-11 is world plumbing day 2022! Starting today, I am using this day, once a year, to inspect the plumbing at Cliff Cottage. It was inspired by an event on Sunday, 2021-07-25 when wastewater from the washing machine started to back up over the bathroom floor. The piping leading from the washing machine was clogged. It had probably gone at least a decade since the piping was last checked.
After an hour’s work spread over two days, everything worked normally again. To prevent these sorts of emergencies in the future, I decided that the best way was to perform preventative maintenance once a year. I googled plumbing day, and discovered it was an event happening around the world, on this date that started in 2010.
There are several similar days throughout the year that I won’t be celebrating, in part because they are too similar: World Water Day = 03-22; World Cleanup Day = 09-15; Global Handwashing Day = 10-15; World Toilet Day = 11-19. Yes, on this weblog, International Standard ISO 8601 is used for dates, in the format YYYY-MM-DD. Here, only MM-DD appear.
It is very easy to avoid/ postpone preventative maintenance activities. Thus, a fixed date, once a year, helps people schedule activities. In Norway, 12-01 is set aside as Smoke Detector Day. Batteries on all of the smoke detectors in the house are replaced once a year on that date, with the older batteries recycled to power less critical operations, or given to the public library that has taken over the techno workshop.
Other days that could be useful for doing related maintenance and other work, include: Global Recycling Day = 03-18; World Gardening Day = 04-14; Naturalists may prefer Naked Gardening Day, which is the first Saturday in May, In 2022 that is 05-07.
Voluntary Assignment: Are there other days in the year that should be set aside/ used for various maintenance activities? If so, please share these as a comment.
Not just days, but years and decades
Since this is 2022, it is the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture. Artisanal fishing consists of various small-scale, low-technology, low-capital, fishing practices undertaken by individual fishing households, often coastal or island ethnic groups that make short fishing trips close to the shore. In 2023, it will be the International year of Millets. Millets are highly variable small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder = animal feed, and human food. Millets are important crops in the semiarid tropics of Asia and Africa (especially in India, Mali, Nigeria, and Niger). 97% of millet production occurs in developing countries. The crop is favoured due to its productivity and short growing season under dry, high-temperature conditions.
The period from 2021 to 2030 is the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. It would also be fun to hear from other people on how they are approaching this task.
World Water Day (03-22) was an event I managed at Leksvik senior secondary school. The municipality of Leksvik (now amalgamated with Rissa to form Indre-Fossen) is adjacent to Inderøy. It hosted numerous companies making water related products, everything from domestic faucets, long-length infrastructure piping and and valves for ship ballast systems, to containerized desalination equipment. Many of the companies producing these products have now sold off their product lines, or moved, either abroad or to other parts of Norway. The school received funding to start a project with a focus on energy and water. In 2008, I was hired as project manager. My focus was on building and using submersibles = remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). I also transformed the building housing the project into Nautilus, a virtual submarine. It took its name from the Jules Verne’s (1828 – 1905) fictional submarine featured in his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1874). When I worked there, the school celebrated World Water Day from 2009 to 2015.
Note: When published it was claimed that World Water Day and World Goth Day shared the same date. They do not. World Water Day is 03-22, while World Goth Day is 05-22. Updated: 2022-03-23 at 19:30.