In the final episode of our "Doctors of Your Home" series, Bill Reid dives deep into the plumbing system - arguably the most critical yet overlooked aspect of home design. From water supply to waste management and gas systems, this episode covers everything homeowners need to know about plumbing before they start their project.

Key Topics Covered:

• The three primary components of home plumbing: water, waste, and gas systems

• Understanding water meter sizes and utility service requirements

• Load calculations for water and gas systems to prevent costly upgrades

• When to hire a plumbing engineer vs. using a plumbing contractor

• The importance of fixture selection in the design phase

• Common pitfalls in remodel projects with aging plumbing systems

• Fire sprinkler system requirements and their impact on water service

• Coordination between plumbing, structural, and architectural plans

Why This Matters: Poor plumbing planning can result in expensive change orders, structural conflicts, and daily annoyances that last a lifetime. Bill shares real-world examples of projects where inadequate planning led to $30,000+ utility upgrades and structural complications during construction.

Action Items for Homeowners:

1. Investigate existing utility service capacity before design begins

2. Create a complete fixture inventory room by room

3. Determine whether your project needs a plumbing engineer

4. Coordinate plumbing plans with structural and architectural designs

5. Consider re-piping older homes (pre-1980) during major renovations

Expert Insights:

• Plumbing engineers offer advantages in efficiency design, not just functionality

• Early planning prevents costly structural conflicts during construction

• Fixture selection cannot be delayed - it impacts everything from space planning to budget

• Load calculations are essential for adequate utility service sizing

This episode concludes the "Doctors of Your Home" series, having covered the structural (bones), mechanical (respiratory), electrical (nervous system), and plumbing (circulatory) systems that form the foundation of quality home design.

• Free Story: The Tale of Two Homeowners
• https://the-awakened-homeowner.kit.com/09608e1727
• Watch: YouTube
• https://www.youtube.com/@TheAwakenedHomeownerv
• Listen: Podcast
• https://podcast.theawakenedhomeowner.com/listen
• Read: AMAZON , All Book Stores
• https://www.amazon.com/Awakened-Homeowner-Orchestrate-Construction-Success-ebook/dp/B0F1MDRPK7
• https://books2read.com/u/bpxj76
• Visit: Homepage
• https://www.theawakenedhomeowner.com/
• Follow: Instagram: Facebook:
• https://www.instagram.com/theawakenedhomeowner/
• https://www.facebook.com/theawakenedhomeowner/
• Contact: Email: wwreid@theawakenedhomeowner.com

Mentioned in this episode:

The Awakened Homeowner Book

The Awakened Homeowner Book

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.