In a popular movie of yesteryear — 1967’s The Graduate — the character Benjamin Braddock is assured that the future of everything can be summed up in one word: plastics. Tell that to the authors of the Chicago plumbing code.More than a half century later and the city’s code still requires copper and cast iron waterlines, rather than PVC, in many Chicagoland buildings. Consequently, plumbers are still having to solder copper joints or thread cast iron pipe to fashion water systems according to code.“In anything over three stories in height, PVC isn’t allowed,” explains Rodney M. Hardy, president of the Chicago
