Getting Your Plans Approved : Plumbing Fittings Diagrams
Rough-in plumbing diagrams, more commonly known as plumbing fittings diagrams, are essential to the process of applying for a building permit if you intend to improve or expand upon the plumbing facilities in your home. Essentially, well-executed plumbing fittings diagrams help building inspectors and authorities determine that your plumbing meets the required residential code in your area – and, really, why would you have it any other way?
Of course, this article isn’t going to be of interest to you if your city doesn’t allow homeowners to do their own plumbing work. This is the case in some states in America, as well as part of Europe (unless you happen to be a master plumber, of course). Assuming that you aren’t being forced to hire an expensive professional to do what online tutorials can now teach you to do in a couple of hours, you’re probably only going to need plumbing fittings diagrams for the new parts of your home, up to where they meet with the pre-existing plumbing system.
Now, drawing a plumbing diagram, whether it’s intended for your home or your RV, needs to conform to certain standards. This doesn’t mean that you need to be a skilled artiste, but you do need to be capable of isometric drawing. Drawing isometrically means depicting the perspective of standing not directly in front of, but at a slightly horizontally staggered angle to the thing being represented. This is simply so that whoever looks at your plumbing fittings diagrams will be able to see where the corners of the room are, where the plumbing joints are, and so forth. This doesn’t mean that you’ll need to actually draw the pipes. You can use simple lines to represent the pipes, and label the points at which certain features (valves, joints, drains, vent pipes, and so forth) appear.
The great thing about doing such a drawing is that it will allow you to get a professional opinion, from the plumbers who grant plumbing or electrical permits in your city, without having to pay anything more than the application fee. Thus if you wind up linking two drain pipes at 90 degrees under a concrete slab (an illegal connection in the vast majority of places, albeit not in plastic RV plumbing systems, where the pressures are low enough for such a stressful alignment to be tolerable), you’ll have a pro to tell you in red ink exactly what’s wrong, allowing you to devise your very own legal and efficient plumbing system by the simple process of trial and error.
If you are a first timer to the whole DIY plumbing thing, before you even start working on your plumbing fittings diagrams you’ll want to take a look at the most recent plumbing products available, some of which, if you’re willing to foot the bill, can make your life a whole lot easier, eliminating the need for soldering, and, in some case, even tools. I’d recommend visiting the home page for Watts Plumbing Fittings. Since 1874 Watts has come to produce pretty much every conceivable plumbing fixture, from ball valves, butterfly valves and dielectric unions to balancing and flow measurement components, hydronic and steam heat fixtures and anti-scale systems. Find the products that you intend to use first, and adjust your plans appropriately.
