Service Architecture
Built to be serviced for a thousand years
A house fails not when its walls fall, but when a burst pipe, a dead wire, or an obsolete furnace forces you to tear those walls open. Relic solves that permanently: the structure is permanent, and every system that can leak, clog, or wear out lives inside a conduit you can reach.
01 / The principle
Separate what lasts from what wears
A building is not one object with one lifespan. Its concrete shell can stand for a millennium; its wiring is obsolete in a generation; its mechanical equipment in a decade. The mistake that dooms ordinary houses is entombing the short-life systems inside the long-life structure — casting pipe into slabs, burying cable in walls — so that the whole building ages at the pace of its weakest, fastest-failing part.
Relic refuses that. The permanent, thousand-year value is the concrete shell, the shafts, the sleeves and chases, and the visible 316L stainless terminals. Everything replaceable stays reachable. The concrete remains permanent. The systems remain reachable. Anything that leaks, clogs, moves, filters, balances, controls, or fails remains accessible.
02 / Inside the wall
Services run in cast-in stainless-steel conduit, never in the structure
Relic does not treat short-life building systems as part of the permanent concrete shell. The house is designed as a solid cast-concrete structure with services routed through cast-in stainless-steel conduits, sleeves, oversized chases, and mechanical spines. Finished walls read as concrete on both sides. There are no drywall-like removable wall faces and no large generic access panels in primary rooms.
Electrical, data, and controls run in cast-in stainless-steel conduit with accessible boxes and pull points. Plumbing supply runs in oversized sleeves where replacement is required, while valves, manifolds, fittings, traps, and cleanouts remain accessible from cabinet backs, closets, mechanical rooms, or small flush service ports. HVAC uses permanent cast-in concrete chases with removable smooth-metal duct liners. The chase can last with the building; the duct liner, grille, damper, filter, fan, coil, and equipment can be cleaned, removed, or replaced without damaging the concrete shell.
03 / Decoupled lifespans
The shell is permanent. The systems are on their own clock.
Because the pathways are permanent but the contents are not, each system can be renewed on its own schedule — indefinitely — without a single demolition.
04 / The detail language
Six wall & access types, coordinated before the pour
Every wall on a Relic drawing set carries one of these codes, so a builder — today or three centuries from now — knows exactly what runs where and how to reach it.
Solid Concrete Electrical Wall
Solid concrete wall with cast-in electrical conduit, separate low-voltage conduit, spare future conduit, accessible outlet/switch boxes, and accessible pull points. No plumbing or HVAC.
Solid Concrete Electrical + Air Wall
Solid concrete wall with cast-in electrical/low-voltage conduit plus a separate oversized cast-in air chase. The air chase receives a removable smooth-metal duct liner. No plumbing. Dampers and balancing points must remain accessible.
Solid Concrete Wet Wall
Solid concrete wall at bathroom, kitchen, laundry, or mechanical zones. Hot/cold/recirc supply lines run in sleeves where replacement is required. Drain/vent runs in a serviceable wet chase with cleanouts accessible from cabinet backs, closets, mechanical rooms, or small flush service ports. No waste lines permanently entombed in structural concrete.
Solid Concrete Mechanical Spine
Major vertical/horizontal service zone where electrical, air, wet systems, manifolds, panels, ERV, HPWH, filters, dampers, and equipment connect. This is where complexity belongs. Access is from a mechanical room or secondary service face, not large panels in primary rooms.
Flush 316L Service Port
Small flush stainless plate used only where access is required for a pull point, cleanout, valve, damper, sensor, or duct liner end. Use shadow gaps and matching fasteners. Do not make the whole wall removable.
Removable Duct Liner in Cast-In Chase
Oversized cast-in concrete air chase with a removable smooth-metal duct liner. The chase is permanent; the liner (and its grille, damper, filter, fan, coil, and equipment) is cleaned, removed, or replaced from the room terminal, mechanical room, closet side, or a flush 316L service port.
05 / Air, without a permanent machine
Removable HVAC Duct Liner System
Relic HVAC is designed as a permanent air-path architecture, not a permanent machine. The concrete wall or spine contains an oversized cast-in chase. A smooth metal duct liner slides into that chase and can be cleaned, removed, or replaced from the room terminal, mechanical room, closet side, or service port. The chase is permanent; the liner is replaceable.
Visible air terminals should be 316L stainless steel. Hidden duct liners are sealed galvanized steel minimum, with 304 stainless or 316L stainless as premium/coastal alternates. Filters, fans, coils, dampers, actuators, balancing devices, and controls must never be buried in concrete.
06 / Why a thousand years
Nothing that wears out is trapped in anything that lasts
Give the shell the durability of engineered concrete and stone and it will outlast every owner. Route every service through a permanent, accessible pathway and the house never has to be gutted to stay current — copper becomes fiber, a furnace becomes a heat pump, a heat pump becomes whatever comes next, each swapped through the same conduit and port.
That is the whole idea. A thousand years is not a promise about a frozen object; it is the result of a building designed to be endlessly, gracefully maintained.
The complete Solid Service Architecture — wall types, chase geometry, duct-liner details and the mechanical spine — is drawn and specified in every Relic Plan Package.