On Sat, 26 May 2007 02:59:34 GMT, Robert Allison
wrote:

mm wrote:
In a townhouse n'hood near mine, many of the houses have a pipe coming
out of the wall, and I wonder what it is.

It's a white plastic 4" right angle pipe connector that comes out
about 4 inches** and then turns to point down. Nothing is connected at
that point. It's at the same level as the garden faucet so I guess it
comes out of the ceiling of the basement.

**It only comes out as far as the right-angle piece puts it. There is
no other pipe showing.

Some rows of homes have this, but others don't. The ones built maybe
around 1997 have them, and the ones built 2 or 3 years later don't.
(There are some others that don't that I thought were also built the
same year as the first group, but if the construction year determines
if there is a pipe or not, maybe I'm wrong.)

I've met a couple of the people who live there, but the odds one of
them knows what the pipe is for seem slim to me.

Sounds like either a dryer vent,

Maybe. Some of these houses have dryer vents, the kind with louvers
that close. I have to go look again to see if any houses have both.t.

or a vented gas grill like a
Jenn-Aire or such.

These houses are smaller and cheaper than mine. I can't imagine such
a grill installed in whole rows of them. Especially if the pipe is
coming from the basement, which it seems to be.

As to the furnace intake, aem, maybe there was one. I'll have to go
back and look. What size would it be? There might have been one or
two 1- or 2-inch pipes I didn't account for. I asked about the 4 inch
pipe because it was so noticable.

I may go tomorrow afternoon.