1975 — Bell-Bottoms, Blockbusters & the Birth of Custom Pipe & Fabrication
Fifty years ago the world was humming to Saturday Night Fever (okay, the single actually dropped in ’76—close enough), lining up for Jaws, and marveling at the first consumer VHS players. Bill Gates and Paul Allen had just filed the paperwork for a little start-up called “Micro-soft,” and gasoline cost about 57 cents a gallon. In the water world, Congress had only recently passed the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), pushing municipalities to think harder about treatment and distribution.
Amid the pop-culture buzz and regulatory shake-ups, a small fabrication shop in California opened its doors with a simple mission: build rugged, reliable pipe and pump components that keep America’s water moving. That shop? Custom Pipe & Fabrication.
Water & Pump Tech in 1975
| 1975 Reality | Why It Mattered |
|---|---|
| Vertical turbine pumps were largely cast-iron workhorses driven by analog controls and manual inspections. | High horsepower, low efficiency—but they got the job done for agriculture and municipal wells. |
| Waterworks piping relied heavily on bare steel and asbestos-cement lines. | Corrosion and safety standards were… let’s say “evolving.” |
| SCADA systems were still room-sized computers. | Real-time data? Only if you liked printouts and blinking lights. |
Five Decades of Progress—Our Front-Row Seat
| Then (’75) | Now (’25) |
|---|---|
| Blueprints on drafting tables | 3-D CAD with finite-element analysis to optimize wall thickness and flow paths. |
| Cast-iron wetted parts | Duplex stainless, Vesconite bearings, NSF-certified coatings. |
| Hand-welded spools checked by flashlight | Automated sub-arc stations and digital borescopes ensure 100 % penetration & traceability. |
| Manual pump curve estimates | Variable-frequency drives & cloud SCADA fine-tune efficiency down to the kilowatt. |
| Paper logbooks for maintenance | Sensor-driven predictive analytics flag bearing wear before a drop of downtime. |
Fun Flashbacks That Still Make Us Smile
- A gallon of milk: $1.57
- The hottest tool in the fab shop: a brand-new Lincoln “buzz box” stick welder
- Top Billboard hit: “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain & Tennille (solid advice for customer relationships, too!)
- Average new home price: $42 600—less than what a single 200-HP stainless vertical turbine package might cost today
What Hasn’t Changed
- Connection First. Whether you visited our two-bay shop in ’75 or our 120,000 sq-ft facility today, you’re greeted by people who know your name (and your project specs).
- Customers as Partners. We still design every spool, column pipe, or discharge head around your application—not around what’s easiest for us to fabricate.
- Pride in Craft. From stick-weld badges to robotic TIG seams, the signature is the same: built to last.
Cheers to the Next 50
We’ve grown up alongside the vertical-turbine and waterworks industries—helping farmers irrigate smarter, cities deliver safer drinking water, and utilities extend asset life with data-driven upgrades. As we toast half a century, we’re just as excited about what’s next: advanced alloys, AI-powered maintenance, and yes, maybe smart pipe that texts when it’s time for a gasket change.
Thanks for being part of the journey—whether you came aboard in the bell-bottom decade or just last month. Here’s to the next 50 years of keeping water flowing and connections strong.
—The Custom Pipe & Fabrication Family
