William Reid: [00:00:00] All right. Here's the goal. We want to make sure that you know what flows downhill when you build your home. That's right. We're going to be talking about plumbing. How exciting, isn't it? We're in the middle of our "Doctors of Our Home" series. We've covered HVAC, electrical design. We even talked about the bones of your home and structural engineering.

We're going to move into plumbing now. Plumbing and electrical are really similar in all the things that you need to think about. And we're thinking about all of these things before you even begin design, before you maybe even have purchased a lot. And we're certainly going to be covering things that you'll need to think about during design.

So let's move into the outdoor studio and talk about plumbing, your water system, your waste system, your gas system, and make sure that it's all going in the right direction.

All right. Welcome back. We are here in the [00:01:00] "Doctors of Our Home" series, a miniseries of the "World of Design," and we're going to move into the plumbing aspect of your home, which, I know it's—you realize it's not the most exciting aspect. It's all concealed behind the walls and you just expect it all to work.

But what's not exciting is when you're laying down in your new primary suite, and the toilet flushes from the second floor above and flows right down the wall, right behind your head, and you get to hear that for the rest of your life. How does that sound? So we're going to try to avoid that by proper planning.

Remember, the Awakened Homeowner right now is all about proper planning way before you're purchasing that lot or building a new home, or remodeling an existing home, and that's what we're going to talk about.

So plumbing consists of three primary components. You have your water system, you have your [00:02:00] waste system, and you have your gas system.

So a plumber handles all of those aspects. And if you're going to be putting gas in your home, they'll also be installing that. If you're going to be putting fire sprinklers into your home, that's usually a different contractor. That's actually a different license. But it directly impacts things to be considered when it comes to the water supply of your home. So let's dive in.

Just like we've talked about recently in the electrical aspect of the "doctors of the design," you have hopefully—there's a couple options you have for your water supply. Either you're going to be on some type of municipal system or a utility district of some sort where water is brought to your site by a provider, the city or the county, water department, whatever, or you actually have [00:03:00] a domestic water well on site. We'll primarily be talking about the typical—more typical, I should say—solution, which is water being provided by utility district.

And one of the things you have at your property borderline hopefully is a water meter that has been established by that district and is set for you to tie into, or maybe you're already tied into it because you're doing a remodel project. But that's one of the first things you want to be thinking about is there even water service nearby my lot that I think I want to buy or that I just bought?

Utility investigation—water, power, sewer, communications—is one of the first things they'll do before you purchase a lot. Because that can directly affect the value of the lot and also your construction costs. So keep that in mind when you're thinking about your project and beginning of planning.

The water meter itself is—there's a size [00:04:00] to it. It could be a three-quarter inch, one inch, one and a quarter inch. It just depends on the subdivision that you're purchasing in or living in, and that's going to be important for you when you go to do your project. So for example, if you're planning a—let's say you own an existing home and you're planning to demolish most of it and double the size of it.

Or let's say you just purchased a lot and you're planning to build a large custom home on it. The size of the water meter is important in order to feed the house and all the fixtures in it, just like electrical work where the size of the electrical service, 200 amp, 100 amp, 400 amp is important to feed all of the appliances and all the equipment in the home.

So they're very similar, very parallel, and you need to understand what size meter you have to work with. Just because you may not have the exact size you need, it's not the end of the world. You'll be able to [00:05:00] upgrade that usually with your provider. But there are load calculations that you will do during the project that will determine the size of the meter you need, and we're going to get to that in a minute.

So you have your water system, and that is pretty self-explanatory. That's the water supply system coming from your provider into your home, servicing all of your fixtures, and each one of those fixtures takes up a certain amount of volume. Then you have your waste system and your waste system is also pretty self-explanatory.

That's getting rid of all of the water and waste out of your home and into either a septic system that's on site or a municipal system where you've tied into a sewer line. And that size is usually a static size, you can't really change that size at the point of entry to the lot. And it's usually a four inch [00:06:00] line called a lateral.

So a lateral is the pipe, kind of like a "T" comes off of the main line that's probably in the middle of the street or somewhere near the street. And you tie into that with your waste system. So it's not as complicated when it comes to water or electric service and calculations and all that kind of stuff, but it is important for you to know if you do have a wastewater system in place in the property that you have now, if you live there and you're remodeling, you probably already know if you're buying a new lot, you may not know.

Some systems actually have a hybrid where it might be a private development where they have a leach field somewhere in the development, not on your site. But you're still required to put a tank into your property and then drain the waste water that's generated from the waste system, the septic system, into a community leach field. So there's a couple varieties. You've got the [00:07:00] full-on septic system with a leach field on your property. You've got tied into the city or community water district.

Or a sewer district. And then you may have a hybrid system where you have a septic tank and you're tied into a community system. So you're going to want to pay attention to what you have to work with. This will affect your budget and it will affect—it could potentially affect the actual design of the home, the placement of the home, the location of tanks, and so on.

So you've got your waste system, and then you have your gas system. So your gas system again, pretty self-explanatory. It is either natural gas that's been provided by a local utility provider, or you have a propane system that's on site where you have a large tank somewhere on the property and that's servicing things like cooking, appliances, heating appliances, water heating appliances, and the like.

Now there is a [00:08:00] trend that homes, new homes that are being built or even large renovations where they are deciding not to use gas and to go to an all-electric home. And that is because they're able to supplement the use of the electricity by installation of a solar power system. Now this is great, if you are okay with electric cooking systems instead of gas—a lot of people prefer gas—then you'll be okay. But one thing I want to caution you, and this crosses over into the electric episode I just covered, is that if you do go all-electric, it's likely going to drive a demand for increased electrical service to the property, which could get costly. So be careful if you just automatically jump on that bandwagon because you could end up with increased costs. But generally speaking, it's not a bad idea to try to go all-electric as long as you supplement it with a [00:09:00] photovoltaic solar power system.

So those are your three components we're going to talk about today. Your water system, your waste system, and your gas system, and the things that you should be aware of when you're ready to dive into design.

I do want to touch on one more thing with the gas system. And one thing that I want you to be careful with is if you're developing a home, or let's say you're doing a substantial remodel on your project and you're going to double the size of your home and you're going to add a pool and you're going to add a hot tub or a spa to it, and maybe you're going to have an outdoor cabana with barbecue elements in it.

You can see what's happening here is most of those are fueled by gas, natural gas. In this case, this scenario I'm talking to you about right now is with the natural gas provided by a utility company. Now what happens is just like electrical and just like plumbing water, there are load calculations that need to be [00:10:00] done.

So if you add a fire pit and barbecue and spa and pool, and maybe you added a fireplace in the new primary suite, these things add up to the amount of BTUs it'll be drawing to service these appliances and a load calculation needs to be done in order to determine if the existing gas meter size is adequate.

I had a project—the same one I spoke with electrical—where all of these things I just mentioned were added to the home, dramatically increasing the size of the gas requirements and one thing led to another. We ended up having to upgrade the gas meter on the side of the home by a substantial amount, which meant we had to dig up the yard, dig up the street, and run a whole new main gas line to the main pipe in the street.

And [00:11:00] this cost, I think in the neighborhood of $30,000, I believe, for the owner to be able to do this, to get to achieve what they wanted to do in the design, which sounds crazy, right? This is a large renovation. This is over a million dollar project in this particular case. Made sense to them, but my point here is you need to know as a homeowner if this is going to be a requirement in the beginning, not during construction.

This particular case I mentioned, we did analyze this in the beginning. We didn't have as much luck with the electrical because things got added during construction, but here we knew it and we were able to be ahead of the game by filing an application to upgrade the gas service, which incidentally took six months.

So it's never too early to begin that application process with your provider. But my point is knowing this ahead of time during the planning phase is really good for you. So you could theoretically—you could just [00:12:00] bite the bullet and upgrade the whole service. But it may be if you don't go with the fire pit and you got rid of the fireplace in the primary suite, maybe you don't need to upgrade the whole gas line and spend 30, 40, $50,000 to upgrade your gas line. So this keeps, again, that mission of keeping you in the driver's seat so that you can make informed decisions without being behind the eight ball and at the mercy of everybody else. So I wanted to hit that point.

So let's move into why you should care about plumbing when you start designing your project, and one of the things that's really important for you to understand is that plumbers price out their projects based on the amount and type of fixtures in each of the rooms.

So if you have a primary suite with a shower and handhelds and body sprays and the toilet of course, and two sinks and so on, the plumber [00:13:00] often factors their pricing in by fixture count. And the reason I'm mentioning this is the lifestyle that you have or you desire to have in your new home is directly related to all of these things we're talking about in this entire podcast.

But today's about plumbing. So when you're working with your design professionals, you're going to want to convey what exactly you would like in your home, in your bathrooms, in your bars. If you want to be able to have an outdoor kitchen environment. If you want to have an island sink in the kitchen along with a primary sink and two laundry rooms, or whatever the case may be, you're going to want to use your inspirations that we talked about way back in the beginning and convey your desires to your design team so that they can include these things on the plans.

And I emphasize that [00:14:00] because this is what the plumbers really are going to be looking at and care about. And again, here we are at an opportunity to blow your budget.

And as I've mentioned in the past, people dig into their projects, they start construction and then all of a sudden everybody's complaining that we call it scope creep. We call it blowing my budget. All of a sudden you want to have a fire pit out in the backyard, you've got to run a gas line to it. That's a change order. But that wasn't included in the plans because you didn't express it in the plans. And you see where I'm going here is the more thorough you are in your planning, the more realistic you are with your budgeting, the more control you have. I keep saying that. I realize that over and over again, but this is really important now a plumbing engineer.

Is one of the options of the MEP: Mechanical, electrical and plumbing. A plumbing engineer on a project is [00:15:00] definitely one of the options that you have to get everything that you want outside of your head and off your inspiration pictures and into plans and specifications for people to price your project out.

Now that said, it's not as often that homeowners hire plumbing engineers to do their projects, although I wouldn't rule it out completely. It's very often that architects, residential designers and even interior designers do a lot of the plumbing design on the work. When it comes to the location and the type of fixtures, there are other requirements that are sometimes mandated by the city or county building departments where they require line diagrams.

Showing the directions and all the locations of all the water and waste lines. And that's something that's usually out of the scope of an architect or residential designer. They also will [00:16:00] require a gas line diagram showing what all the fixtures that will be involved and the BTUs. And that's usually outside the scope of an architect or an interior designer.

Plumbing engineers can definitely handle that. And if you're getting into a project where it is a more substantial project, let's say it's a very large custom home or you in particular have very particular requirements for high-end efficient water heating systems—maybe you want to build a brewery in the garage, whatever. These are the times where you might want to think about getting a plumbing engineer involved in the project and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing, MEP, those are usually one agency, although you can find individuals that help you design all of those aspects of your home.

Some advantages of using a plumbing engineer is the fact that they are very up to speed on all the new technologies, all of the things that are required by the city, they're up to [00:17:00] speed on—they can do all of that, and we'll get into more details on that. Going back to what a plumbing contractor works off of, they work off of the architectural plans for runs and lengths, and then they work off the type of fixtures.

So you, as a homeowner, sharing all the different fixtures that you want is really important to get accurate estimates so that you don't get that change order in the mail Monday morning. The other thing that is really important to understand about proper planning when it comes to plumbing, whereas electrical has a lot more flexibility and running wires up and down and around.

Plumbing's a little bit more restrictive and heating and air conditioning's a little bit more restrictive too. But the plumbing waste system, for example, is very restricted when it comes to how far a run can go, how much slope it needs, how many bends are allowed in a particular waste line, [00:18:00] et cetera, et cetera.

I'm not going to try to turn you into a plumbing contractor, but what you care about is anything that could get in the way of a waste line. So for example, if you have a bathroom upstairs and then you have your primary floor downstairs and you have a lot of structural beams and maybe even some steel work inside the walls because you have—you wanted that big wide-open floor plan. The waste line for that bathroom upstairs, it needs to go somewhere and it can't just get drilled right through a structural beam usually. Sometimes you can, but that's a very specific situation. So an architect doesn't necessarily go to that level, right?

So what, where a plumbing engineer comes involved is an architect will orchestrate or coordinate all of the design consultants on a project, a plumbing engineer being one of them. And an architect would coordinate the [00:19:00] plumbing plan with the structural plan, with the architectural plan, and then interface with the plumbing engineer and come up with the best routing and solution for the piping for the project.

And I really want to emphasize this because some of the alternatives is you're out there on site or hopefully maybe you're not out there on site, which is worse, and a plumber's out there and he's trying to figure out how to get a drain from point A to point B, and all of a sudden he drills right through a structural beam that's not allowed to be drilled through.

Happens—in fact, probably happens too often. Doesn't ask questions, just wants to keep the job going, or he notches out something. He notches out a joist, two-thirds of a joist or something to get the plumbing to where he needs it to go, without asking questions. The home builder maybe wasn't on site at the time.

This happens a lot if you have a project that is somewhat complicated or larger. A plumbing [00:20:00] engineer and the architect have already coordinated all of that and figured all of that out, and that's by layering their plans on top of each other and analyzing it and communicating. So paying an architect to figure this out is a smart move.

Don't always have to do that. But if it's a big one, you might want to think about it. If it's a medium-size, custom home project or just a 2,500 square foot house or something that's, maybe it's a ranch style. You may not need to go to that level, but somebody has to pay attention to that.

So one of the questions you're going to want to ask is, how do we know that all of the plumbing's going to work? How do we know that the drain lines are going to go where we want them to go? Do we know if the drain lines are going to be right behind my head when I'm sleeping from the bathroom upstairs? Do we know if the drain line's going to be right in the middle of the dining room wall [00:21:00] in between the dining room and the kitchen where all my guests can hear the water flowing down? These are the things that need to be thought of ahead of time and aren't always thought of ahead of time, frankly. So that's my job today is to just bring that to your attention so that when you are working with your architect, you can ask some of those questions.

Now, another one that really can blow people away is in new construction, at least in California now, and I know California's a little unique, if you will—but if you're building a brand new home in California, you're required to install a fire sprinkler system. And that of course adds complexity and cost to a project.

But one of the things it definitely does is it increases the amount of water that needs to be supplied to the building. And this also can apply to significant remodel projects. So if you are [00:22:00] doing a significant remodel where you're demolishing over half the house and adding on and expanding and just transforming it basically into a new home.

But technically it's a remodel. There's a pretty good chance you'll have to add fire sprinklers. There's a 50% rule out there, and that will be one of my other episodes coming up. But there's a 50% rule and each city kind of calculates that on their own with their own methods. But if you're remodeling or improving more than 50% of the home, that usually triggers a lot of things.

But one of them being fire sprinklers. And why you care about this is because now your three-quarter inch water line that's coming to the property now needs to be double the size—inch and a half, which means the water line from the meter to the existing house, if it's a remodel, is no longer good. And the meter itself is no longer good because the aperture is set at a three-quarter inch meter size, and that has to be upgraded, which could cost money—it could cost a lot of money depending on where you live.

So this is a big red flag for [00:23:00] everybody when they're doing, when they're building new homes and need to be aware of that. So keep that in mind.

All right, let's—all right, let's move over to remodel projects specifically. And I want to bring this to your attention. If you're doing a remodel project or thinking about buying an existing home to remodel and not completely tear down, but remodel is if it's a—nine—if it's pre-1980, let's say.

There's a chance—pretty good chance that the piping for the water supply is steel or galvanized, and over time galvanized pipes deteriorate and slowly close up because of all of the mineral buildup inside the pipe. This is why sometimes if a fixture sits for an extended period of time, you go on vacation, you come back, you instantly turn the water on, and a little bit of discoloration comes out to begin with, and then eventually clears.

That's [00:24:00] an indication that there is deterioration in the pipe, and that can be a real problem, a real headache for people remodeling homes, plumbers dealing with it. So I want you to be aware of that, and if you're going to be considering doing a remodel project you may want to consider at that time replacing—doing what's called the re-pipe and re-piping the entire home with all new water supply lines that could be out of copper.

Or most recently people are using PEX which is somewhat of a plastic piping material that's actually becoming pretty common now and less costly and faster to install and colder climates that actually can expand more than a rigid, copper type pipe, but with old galvanized pipes, you're going to get reduced pressure, right?

You're going to get reduced flow. [00:25:00] All of these things that people love in their water supply lines, they're slowly getting diminished. And if you see—if you can, YouTube it, look it up, old galvanized pipes, you'll see plumbers pulling pipes out with just literally like an eighth of an inch hole inside of it for the water to flow and the rest of it's corroded up.

You could very well have that same situation and the reason I'm bringing it up right now is from a cost efficiency standpoint. So let's say you're remodeling a kitchen or maybe you're moving the kitchen to another part of the house and you're doing two new bathroom remodels and maybe you're expanding to expect to tie into 60-year-old plumbing is kind of a loss—you're going to—you're going to lose there. And that's because the plumber's going to try to tie into that old galvanized with new P—piping to move things around. And then you're still dependent, it's like the weakest link, right? You're still dependent on the [00:26:00] old piping.

So I want you to seriously consider when you go to get your cost estimates for your project, and when you're writing up the scope of work document for your project, or your architect, or your owner agent is writing up your scope of work to get an option to just replace all of the water supply lines for the project.

This is going to be the smartest—smartest approach for people doing re—remodeling renovations.

This principle kind of applies to everything when it comes to the systems of your home, right? Plumbing, electrical, mechanical—if you are going to have walls wide open and insulation removed and wiring exposed and plumbing exposed, and heat ducts exposed. Now is the time to seriously consider upgrading all the things that will be behind the wall at the very minimum.

And even better just replacing all of this—all of that particular system at that time remodeled. [00:27:00] You're going—your economies of scale are much better there. And your peace of mind there, knowing that you have all new plumbing, all new wiring, and your insurance company will love you for it too.

All right, let's talk about when do you need a plumbing engineer versus a contractor or an architect doing the plans? And there's some different scenarios here that may—might be able to help you decide which direction to go. Ultimately you can ask your architect and your design team which direction you think we should go with the plumbing design.

But let's keep in mind that you can have your actual plumbing contractor help you with some of the load calculations, the line diagrams for water waste and gas. And I would say, a home that's probably under 4,000 square feet, you may not need a plumbing engineer. If it's a straightforward remodel using the existing infrastructure [00:28:00] and then tying into it, or as I recommended earlier, replacing it, I think you can probably use a plumbing contractor to do what's called design build, where they look at the design—they look at the scope, they look at the design, they come up with a plan, and usually interact with your architect or your general contractor on the scope of work.

But I'd recommend you do that at the preliminary stages before you're actually under construction. So during the design process, during the estimating process, you have your plumbing contractor come to the site with maybe your home builder or your general contractor, and do an evaluation and provide a proposal including the necessary diagrams that the city or county will require projects with just conventional water heating solutions like the typical tanked water heater or even a tankless on-demand water heater system.

A plumbing contractor can usually suffice. And if it's typical municipal water and sew— [00:29:00] sewer connections, a plumbing contractor can usually accomplish everything that you need. Now when you get into projects, like large, complex homes, multi-story homes, multiple buildings over 4,000 square feet, multiple water heating systems, tankless, hydronic heating systems where you've got the—the hot water running through the floor.

That's usually a dedicated—although that is under the plumbing umbrella. Hydronic heating systems usually is a separate trade contractor that does that work, but an engineer is a person that helps design the system, specify and size the equipment. If there's any type of commercial grade equipment that's required, such as sometimes in all electric homes if we have heat—pump water, heating systems.

That's usually outside the scope of a typical [00:30:00] plumbing contractor. They may have put them in before, but they're not—they haven't done it often enough. So a plumbing engineer is going to design the system, diagram it out, specify the equipment, specify where the equipment's going to go, and the methods of installation.

And when you have an engineer, whether it's mechanical, electrical, or plumbing, when you have an engineer, do all of this work for you. You have this objective party that's determining the scope and the specifications, so you can then go to two or three different plumbing contractors and ask them for proposals based on these designs, and that makes your life a little simpler because if you're dealing with three different plumbing contractors with three different opinions, three different products they like to use.

It can get really confusing really fast for a homeowner who doesn't do this on a daily basis. Now, [00:31:00] your general contractor who hopefully you've hired to do your project, would be the primary person to facilitate this, but again, their methodologies may not be perfectly aligned with what might be best for you as the homeowner?

I would really consider a plumbing engineer contractor in situations like this. Fire sprinkler systems usually require an engineering—a plumbing engineer or fire sprinkler contractors often generate their own diagrams, their own design that is used to submit to the county or city. In fact, a lot of plumbing engineers do not do fire sprinkler design, but this adds another layer of complexity where the plumbing engineer will bring in a fire sprinkler contractor to do the actual diagrams, and they're usually the same people that actually install the system.

So this is a good way to pull that off when you get into challenging [00:32:00] sites. Such as well, water septic systems and challenging topography where it's a really sloped lot location of equipment, the pumping required. This is where a plumbing engineer really comes into play. And septic systems can be a little tricky sometimes because if you in purchasing your lot, we're not able to perform the due diligence to understand the soil conditions that I've talked about in a previous episode. A septic system, meaning an on-site system, that manages all the waste from the home. You're not connected to the city anymore. If the soil conditions are poor, if it has a topography, if it's a compacted lot where there's not a lot of space to work with, things like that can really drive everybody crazy, and that's why a plumbing engineer is the perfect person to analyze all of that.

And come up with the [00:33:00] right solution for a septic system Now. A civil engineer also participates in that. So it usually starts with a civil engineer. They start designing the system, and then sometimes the plumbing engineer gets involved to verify all of the conditions that relate to the rest of the home and the amount of waste coming through and things like that.

So you can see that gets a little bit complicated. You're not supposed to know all that. And the idea is your architect is your orchestrator, right? So they're the person that—they are the person that is bringing these people together to design the right system. But if you don't know what's happening, if you don't know what to look out for, how are you going to know what's done?

And I wouldn't guarantee that it's done right. So knowing just a little bit to be able to ask the questions is again, the mission of the awakened homeowner is just to wake you up a little bit and ask these questions. So [00:34:00] that is a scenario where a plumbing engineer comes into play.

So if you're doing a kitchen remodel and a small expansion, you don't need a plumbing engineer usually. But if you're doing a big, huge estate custom home, multiple buildings are interested in all kinds of new technology, recommend getting a plumbing engineer involved.

A couple other benefits of using a plumbing engineer on a project. It's hard to put your finger on the exact savings that could occur. But there are—one of the consumers of energy in a home is the water heating system, whether even with an on-demand water heater, the amount of BTUs required to flash heat, the water, the tank systems to constantly keep in that temperature.

So water heating is one of the number one consumers of energy and it's usually gas or electricity. So a plumbing engineer will [00:35:00] have a knowledge of advanced water heating systems such as heat pumps and a heat pump. Water heating system is like a mini split air conditioning system.

There's an outdoor—there's a variety of them. We won't get into the details, but there's an outdoor unit, just like an air conditioning coil, and then there's an indoor water handling equipment, or some of the newer ones are a fully contained heat, electric heat pump, water heating system, and these things are a lot more efficient to run, therefore saving money on energy.

That's just one small example of how a plumbing engineer can save you money. You may invest in the plumbing engineer themselves, but your utility bills are going to be much lower. And as we know, utilities are continuing to rise. Plumbing engineers are also knowledgeable in smart home integration, so water monitoring systems leak [00:36:00] detection.

Automated controls is something that's becoming more and more popular in homes, especially since water is one of the biggest destroyers of homes, whether it's leaks, water intrusion creation of mold, and all that kind of stuff. So they are very familiar with some of the smart technology and they can also coordinate with the home automation experts to get water monitoring systems installed energy efficient solutions like I mentioned earlier. They are going to be familiar with solar hot water solutions, geothermal solutions, and other renewable technologies that are coming online. And you can explore those with a plumbing engineer.

Your typical plumbing contractor or architect are not going to be as up to date—I would say your architect's probably going to be—your good architects are going to always be [00:37:00] in the learning mode on that kind of stuff. But really a plumbing engineer is going to be the best authority on that. Now, if you're interested in things like geothermal, and we won't get into what geothermal is now, but that's where you're drilling into the ground and you're pulling up that equal temperature.

Routing pipes through the ground and so on to minimize the load on the actual equipment that's generating the heating and cooling. We'll get into that some other time, but you're going to want to be asking these questions to the—your architect and their recommended consultants in plumbing to see if they're familiar with geothermal.

If you're interested in radiant heat, which is, again, the in-floor heating. You're going to want to know if they're familiar with that and if they do that some of the energy efficient water heating systems and things like that. Another thing that the plumbing engineer will provide is [00:38:00] sophisticated load calculations using software and analyzing the flow and ultimately determining the size of the water service that you will need for the project. Now, plumbing contractors are capable of that. It's not—it's usually a little more rudimentary and frankly adequate most of the time. But again, more involved larger projects.

Plumbing engineers have a mindset of designing for efficiency, not just functionality. So they're thinking about the efficient flow of the hot water. They're sizing the piping accordingly. They're specifying the proper insulation methods, installation and installation methods for that. So they're thinking about cost to operate a building as well, so not just point A to point B, this is the fastest way to get it there or this is the easiest way to [00:39:00] get it there.

They're thinking about the cost to operate. So that is something to consider when you are in a mode of minimizing the cost of energy, which again, is becoming more and more important for people to think about. Here's an example where a plumbing engineer in a project identified that a traditional water heating approach for this specific project would require two large tanks in a dedicated mechanical room to serve the home.

And all the fixtures and everything in it. But instead what they did is they specified a heat pump system. And a heat pump mean basically means it's an electric water heating system, much like an HVAC design system, like I mentioned earlier. That not only saved space, because we didn't—we no longer required the tanks, but this system could keep up with the demand and we reduced the operating cost by they had estimated like [00:40:00] $1,200 a year. It might have been more than that by keeping those tanks heated. Of course we had to pay the engineer, but there were other things that the engineer did that also helped with the efficiencies of operating the home. So this was just a tiny little example of how a plumbing engineer can contribute to the project.

All right, so what can you do as a homeowner to make sure that the project is getting designed to meet your expectations?

All right, that was all fun. We've talked about all the technicalities of what a plumbing engineer can do versus a plumbing contractor versus your architect. But here's what you as a homeowner can focus on, and is the data that these people, any of these people need in order to do their job. And that is the fixture selection.

So some people, you know say I don't want to worry about that right now. I just—that's got to come way later. That's installed at the very end, so I don't want to worry about it. And I've had people do that to me [00:41:00] and eventually it bites them in the butt because now all of a sudden they did eventually go out to look at fixtures and decided, oh no, I do want to have a separate shower, and I do want to have body sprays, and I do want to have handhelds, and I do want to have a dedicated bidet and a separate toilet and a urinal, and all kinds of stuff has happened.

Meanwhile, the plans have already been done. The plans are done, the permit's been issued, and sometimes we're under construction. It's a worst case scenario. So as a homeowner, what you can do. And a lot of times your interior designer can help you with this is you are thinking about the fixtures that you want to have in your home and maybe in the future of your home.

So think about the kitchen area. You want to have a complete fixture inventory you room by room, you'll have the fixture areas such as the kitchen, and you'll have, primary and prep sinks. Your dishwashers. How many dishwashers and disposals [00:42:00] ice makers, believe it or not, draw and drain coffee systems.

Outdoor kitchen connections is something to think about because if you are really going to want to run a whole outdoor kitchen and an outdoor shower and all these things. These are the things that matter to people when they're designing. And it's not just, how much water are they going to draw, but it's also going to be the style of the fixtures.

The size of those fixtures, the physical space that they take up within a particular area so the designer can make sure that it's off the wall enough so the valves work. There's all kinds of things. The shower systems are a classic one where, the architect will draw a tub and a shower.

That's it. Or will just draw a tub when you really wanted a shower. And all of the customization and fixtures that you can put in a shower are really fun to look at, and you may want rainhead body sprays, [00:43:00] whatever. So you know, working with the interior design aspect of a project or maybe with your—an architect and specifying all these is important.

I won't go through all the fixtures, but you need to be thinking the primary ones of your kitchens, your bathrooms, your utilities, your utility rooms and maybe shops or hobby rooms, anywhere where you think you want to have water is really important. If you want a fountain, if you want things like that.

So you're going to want to get specific, you're going to want to specify the exact tub and showers that you want to use purely for the amount of water that they'll take in and put out. And the physical space that they'll need for the design. And that will influence just about everything when it comes to the space planning of an area. And not to mention, you'll be able to get an accurate cost on the budget. So that's a really [00:44:00] important aspect of keeping your head in the game when it comes to plumbing.

So let's review real quick that what's the most important to you is the load calculations. And why is that? Because the load calculations will determine the size of the meters, in this case, in plumbing, water, and gas. You may be required to upgrade both of those to achieve everything you want, or you'll be able to modify your design.

So the water load analysis is the total fixture demand, and the only way that can be done is if the actual fixtures are specified to get it down to the nitty gritty. Now, they can use general terms and general standards, but if you go outside those boundaries, you're going to be off and you're going to have problems with getting floaty or fixtures.

They also look at the peak usage scenarios. What happens at certain times of the day when everything's running at once. Even the [00:45:00] fire sprinkler's a big one. Is there going—are—is there going to be fire sprinkler demand for the home? And that will almost always increase the size of the existing service or determine the size that you bring in from the main lateral, from the property line to the new building.

And then the gas load, the gas loads. It's based on BTUs. And every gas appliance has a rating for that. And like I mentioned earlier, it could be all of the fixtures and the customizations that you want with fire pits and outdoor barbecues and, double 48 inch Wolf range things like that.

Water heater is a big one. If you're going to be doing a gas water heating system. How many water heaters are there? What sizes are they? What are the BTU ratings of that? And then is there anything you want to do in the future such as add a pool, add a spa anything like that, that you [00:46:00] want to factor into the future so that you don't have to tear things out in order that are brand new or relatively new in order to do the job?

Some questions you're going to want to ask. Is, will my project require fire sprinklers? That's probably the first one. In what size water service do you think I'm going to need? Will the water company need to upgrade their equipment? What will utility upgrades cost? Will I need to replace the water line on my property now?

A plumbing contractor can probably answer all of those questions for you, frankly, by just looking at a plan and give you a pretty good idea. He's—you're going to hear things like, yeah, you're probably going to need an inch and a half line. You're probably going to need this. You're probably going to need that.

That might be just enough information for you to make informed decisions on whether you want to proceed with certain aspects of the project, or it may give you the information you need to proceed with hiring a plumbing engineer. So there, those are some classic questions to ask [00:47:00] either your architect or if you have a plumbing contractor involved.

Critical questions. And try to stay away from really bad situations that can happen, such as structural conflicts, beams in the way, joists in the way. Plumbers cutting into those things during construction. The critical coordination points would be coordinating with the plumbing, the electrical, and the HVAC design.

And this is where your architect comes into play. You're not expected to do that, but you're expected to know—I'm making—that it needs to happen. When you look at your MEP plans. Mechanical, electrical, plumbing plans, you're going to see things on there, you're going to ask questions. Has all this been coordinated?

So the water heater that we're putting in isn't right on top of the filtration system that's being proposed. That's just a small example. How are these all coordinated together? Ultimately, you're dependent on the architect to do that, and you're not going to know enough [00:48:00] to get into the nitty gritty details.

But if you have a home builder, a general contractor by your side during the design process, this is helpful. And this is why I've mentioned in the past. When you begin working with an architect, ask some of those referral questions, start talking with builders and contractors ahead of time, and even pay them.

To engage with you during the design process. These guys are going to be able to cut a lot of things off that are unnecessary or suggest alternative options with your design team. So you're not just—somebody's, not just cutting corners, if you will. And they're going to also have resources to bring in if needed.

Such as plumbings and electricians and other subcontractors to offer advice on the design that ultimately will be [00:49:00] installing the system. And don't try to get that for free from contractors. Tell them, I want to pay you a consulting fee. This is your time to feel them out, to get to know them, and get way ahead of the game when it comes to hiring your contractor eventually.

All right, so I'm going to—here's your action plan. I'll try to put this into the show notes too, but before design starts, determine if you need a plumbing engineer or contractor. You can do that by talking with your architect. You can do that by gauging the size and complexity of the job. Investigate the existing plumbing system conditions.

That would be for remodel projects. There are ways to camera and film lines, sewer lines. There's ways to remove sections of plumbing to understand how bad it really is. If it's pre-1980, it probably is bad. Identify all the desired fixtures and their locations. Understand existing utility service capacity.

In other words, [00:50:00] how big is your water meter? And how much do you think we're going to need and consider fire sprinklers and then during the development of the design. So now that you're into the design process, you're going to want to perform the water and gas load calculations. You're going to select the specific fixtures and equipment, you're going to coordinate with the structural and architectural plans, and you're going to plan any utility upgrade requirements and costs. So if you think you're going to have to upgrade the gas line, if you think you're going to have to upgrade the water line, begin that application process early. Because it can take just as long to do that as to build the whole damn project. Frankly, it's crazy how long that can take.

Before construction. Actually verify that all the fixtures have been specified and priced. Things can fall through the cracks on that. And you're just going to want to—you're just going to want to make sure that are all pinned down. Confirm the utility services are adequate now that we've [00:51:00] gone through that process.

And document everything in the plans and specifications. So here's the big one where you've gone and done all the trouble of picking out all the fixtures and showing, knowing where you want them all. But somehow not all that information gets into the plan set or the P page, the plumbing page of this particular episode.

And then the plumbing contractor doesn't include the pricing for that big fancy shower you wanted.

I know it sounds crazy, but this happens a lot where even when the due diligence is done, it doesn't get into the plans. And here's what's even worse, it gets into the plans and then they don't read them well, you can't—you know you can lead—what is that? You can lead a water to. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

You can only do so much. You can call your attention, call the attention to the details, to the relevant person, and make sure [00:52:00] that they read it so that they can include it in their pricing. All right, let's wrap this. Let's wrap this one up. The MEP, the P of the MEP, the doctors of your design, the doctors of your home. And here are some key takeaways that I want—I'm just going to drive these points home. The plumbing design isn't really optional. At some point it's got to get done.

The worst time to do it is during the middle of construction. So either hire an engineer or hire an architect or consult with a plumbing contractor, whatever you have to do. But don't do it during design. Don't do it during construction. Because then you'll be just like everybody else on those Facebook groups bitching and moaning that I'm over budget, things are put in the wrong location and my project's delayed.

Investigate your existing plumbing systems if you're doing a remodel project. Plumbing engineers do offer distinct advantages, so don't completely rule them out, especially in bigger [00:53:00] projects. An early coordination prevents conflicts, prevents big mistakes in the field that cost money in time.

Your fixture selection can't wait. The sooner the better when you are looking for your inspiration images early on in the discovery stage of your project, just take a session and say, modern Kitchen Plumbing Fixtures and, flag the ones that you like and save them the—my new little Build Quest system that I'm still in development on is going to—you're going to be able to do that.

You'll be able to tag them to plumbing and then you'll be able to print out a whole plumbing fixture list. Load calculations, prevent surprises. Don't rule those out even in a remodel project. And don't be afraid to invest in good design in hiring a plumbing engineer and paying a plumbing contractor to consult with in paying a contractor to consult with paying your architect.

Don't handcuff your architect and say, I don't want a plumbing [00:54:00] design. We'll figure it out later. Invest in that because you're going to save time and money and you're going to hit your goal of your expectations. At least the odds are going to be a lot better in your favor. So your plumbing system is like your home's circulatory system, I guess we'll call it.

And when it's designed properly, everything flows smoothly, especially the waste line going downhill. When it's not every day in your home reminds you of the shortcuts you took during planning. There's nothing worse than everyday life when you go to the island sink and it's not there because you decided not to do it.

There's nothing worse when you go to lift up the valve on your vanity fixture and it hits your mirror because there wasn't proper planning. These are just tiny little examples that annoy you, can annoy you for the rest of your life. Invest in it. Invest in it. So if this episode helped you understand why plumbing [00:55:00] design matters, share it with someone who's planning a project and remember, the best time to plan your plumbing is before you need it.

The second time is right now. The second best time is right now. Think about that. So we've covered the doctors of your home. We hit the structural the bones. We hit the mechanical, the respiratory system. We hit the electrical system. We hit the plumbing system. I guess we're calling that your circulatory system, or maybe that's your digestive system.

And the electrical is your circulatory system. Your nerve system. These are the things behind the walls of your home, the things that you don't necessarily see that much of. That can directly impact the quality of your life, that can directly impact the cost of your project and can directly effect whether you are in the driver's seat or not in the development of the design of your [00:56:00] project.

The second you're behind the eight ball, you start to lose control. And things start getting done without your knowledge, things start getting changed without your knowledge. So that's what I have for you today. That wraps up this series, and I encourage you to pull the book out. Read the book. It's a 1e-06% of the cost of your project and you can have it by your side during the project and otherwise.

Please subscribe to the podcast series and this is also on YouTube and send me any comments. I think you can do that through YouTube and my email information's all in the show notes. So thanks again and we will see you in the next series. I'm Bill Reid. This is the Awakened Homeowner.