Plumbing for a new home or an addition, across the three visits a build actually needs: ground work before the floor closes, rough-in once framing is up, and finish once the building is done.
01New construction
New construction plumbing happens across three visits, and each one depends on a different part of the build being ready.
Drain and supply lines that will sit under a concrete slab, or beneath a ground-floor framed floor, go in before that floor is poured or closed, because once it is, those lines are no longer reachable without breaking through it.
Once the framing is up, supply and drain lines run through the walls and floors to every fixture location, ahead of insulation and drywall, while everything is still open enough to route them.
Faucets, fixtures and appliances connect to the lines already in place once the walls, floors and cabinetry are finished, the last of the three visits a new build’s plumbing needs.
02The foundation
How the ground floor is built changes how its plumbing goes in, and how forgiving a mistake at that stage is.
Drain and supply lines are laid out and connected before the concrete is poured, then buried in it for good. Every line has to be placed correctly the first time, because reaching one after the pour means breaking through finished concrete.
Lines run beneath the floor joists rather than inside concrete, leaving a crawl space or a basement ceiling to work from if something needs to change later. It is more forgiving than a slab, though still far easier to get right before the floor is closed.
New Construction Plumbing
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03The sequence
New construction plumbing cannot run ahead of the building it sits inside. Ground work waits for the foundation to be ready to receive it, rough-in waits for the framing to be up, and finish waits for walls, floors and cabinetry to be in place, because each stage depends on the building having reached a specific point of its own.
That order is also why a mistake at the ground-work stage carries more weight than one later. A rough-in line is still behind an open wall, reachable if something needs correcting before drywall goes up. A ground-work line is already under concrete or a finished floor by the time anyone would notice a problem with it, which is what makes that first visit the one most worth getting right.
04Questions
Typically three: once for ground work before the slab or the ground floor is closed in, once for rough-in after framing, and once for finish once the walls, floors and cabinetry are done. Each stage waits on other work reaching the right point first.
Because it ends up under concrete or a finished floor. Any line placed wrong, sized wrong, or left out at that stage is difficult to correct later, while every later stage is still reachable through a wall or a ceiling.
The same three stages apply, but an addition usually connects into plumbing that already exists rather than building an entire system from nothing, so the ground-work and rough-in stages are often smaller in scope even though they follow the same order.
Nothing, on the plumbing side. The lines placed at one stage sit ready and untouched while other trades finish the work that has to happen before the next plumbing stage can start, such as framing, insulation, drywall or flooring.
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