Originally Posted by vane171

I have news for you, your pipes are metric in size, just called by imperial names. For example, the most common half inch copper pipe diameter is not 25.4/2 mm which is some 12.7 mm but 15 mm, same as in Europe. There are many instances where the actual sizes are round numbers in metric system but for convenience still called by the imperial system names.

I grew up in metric but moved to Canada long time ago and I can see the advantages of both system and also why the imperial is still with us (it is more natural in many ways). Canada is more metric minded but it is mixed anyway. Even in metric Europe (of course not fully counting British), for example the clock 12/24 hour system is effectively imperial, based on 12 base. If clock divisions were to be decimal, you'd have decimal points all over the clock displays which would be ridiculous.

In Canada, we use degrees Celsius but in the place I work, everything is in Fahrenheit degrees. It actually happened to me that I heard temperature forecast on radio the other day and was wondering why they use Celsius scale, I was fully expecting it to be in Fahrenheit degrees. That's how deep rooted the imperial system is among native, read long time settled folk here, in other words, true blue Canadians.

And not only them, all tradesmen that I know, that immigrated from Europe long ago or even more recently, use the mixed system. You very simply can't get around it and you don't want to because they, like everybody else, also see the advantages of the imperial system.