Now, do you happen to also know why American downspouts so often are square/rectangular and European ones (typically) round?
I remember asking my dad that question when I was a little kid, and he didn’t have a good answer, beyond “probably just a design choice”. That answer left me wanting more. Not to the extent that I’ve ever attempted to find a better answer myself, but still wanting.
I don’t know for certain, but if I had to guess it would be that they used to make round drainage pipes for agriculture out of Terracotta so the first gutter systems in Europe likely used them because that was what they had available at the time. Later systems likely kept the shape both to match what was around them and because people were used to it and expected it. For metal gutters manufactured through certain industrial processes it would be simpler to bend a flat sheet of metal into a rectangular shape and fasten it together rather than making a cylinder.
Again, that’s just a semi-educated guess but it seems reasonable to me.
Good talk!
Now, do you happen to also know why American downspouts so often are square/rectangular and European ones (typically) round?
I remember asking my dad that question when I was a little kid, and he didn’t have a good answer, beyond “probably just a design choice”. That answer left me wanting more. Not to the extent that I’ve ever attempted to find a better answer myself, but still wanting.
I don’t know for certain, but if I had to guess it would be that they used to make round drainage pipes for agriculture out of Terracotta so the first gutter systems in Europe likely used them because that was what they had available at the time. Later systems likely kept the shape both to match what was around them and because people were used to it and expected it. For metal gutters manufactured through certain industrial processes it would be simpler to bend a flat sheet of metal into a rectangular shape and fasten it together rather than making a cylinder.
Again, that’s just a semi-educated guess but it seems reasonable to me.