WELCOME TO THE PLANETARY HOME IMPROVEMENT STORE ︎︎︎ TO FIND A PRODUCT, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN ON THE HOME PAGE ︎︎︎ The home improvement store is a geological site on demand. Rockwool, Sheetrock, Quikcrete. Materials are processed into products, packaged, stockpiled, stacked, and sold across global DIY supply-chains, from Bauhaus to OBI and Hornbach. Basalt, gypsum, limestone. Material economies are severed from mineral entanglements with millennia of rock, fossil, plant, and stone. The store is the modern quarry. It takes 1 day to install drywall; it takes 299 million years to form gypsum. ︎︎ TO FIND A PRODUCT, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN ︎︎︎





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PRODUCT SIZE
Ø50x210x230mm
Ø50x1000mm

GEOLOGICAL PERIOD
Carboniferous & Pemian
250 - 369 MYA

COMPOSITION
57% Chlorine
43% Ethylene
Oil, Salt
GEOLOGICAL BIO
The polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe is found everywhere from industrial to everyday applications. Making up one-fifth of all plastics manufactured worldwide, chances are you have PVC under your sink or in your walls. The geological origins of this banal product can also be found in salt and oil (in the form of chlorine and ethylene),with oil having developed in the Carboniferous period and rock salt between the Permian and the Paleogene Periods.

But this is not a(n inert) pipe. The P- or S-trap’s whiteness and water-tightness masks a history of PVC toxic leaching of lead into water, emissions of dioxins and other human carcinogens, and the oily petrochemistry that forms it. In the US, plastic and iron industries have engaged lobbying wars over pipe infrastructure upgrades. Some plastics are even used for oil pipelines themselves, creating a contiguous pipeline of extraction and circulation.

At the DIY scale, pipe offcuts don’t have to be cast away—life-hacks include drill docks and mattress slings to long-reach vacuum nozzles and oil recovery systems from serviced vehicles and lawn equipment.

EXTRACTION / MANUFACTURING PROCESS
Extract crude oil, natural gas, coal ︎︎︎ "Refine" crude oil by heating and distilling into monomers and fractions  ︎︎︎ "Polymerize"monomers into hydrocarbon chains ︎︎︎ “Pelletize” mixtures ︎︎︎ feed pellets into PVC twin screw extruder ︎︎︎ melt and heat in multiple extruder zones ︎︎︎ extrude through die to shape into a pipe ︎︎︎ cool down shaped pipe ︎︎︎ cut to desired length ︎︎︎ pack and ship




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