Plumbing Home Improvement Advice For New Homes
This plumbing home improvement advice is a good way to understand and keep your plumbing system flowing smoothly and minimizing big or small problems which seem to occur at the most unfortunate times when building a new home. We have listed many of these issues and how to diagnose them in order to keep your home and plumbing healthy.
For example, perhaps you are building a home and you want to ensure that when you are going to have a shower that the water heats up quickly. Consider a point source instantaneous unit or a re-circulation pump. Larger homes may require longer lengths of pipe between the bathrooms and the hot water heater and this may also cause a delay. Ask what the delay will be and if it’s too much you may consider installing a circulation system which can minimize it.
Plumbing is often taken for granted…
Plumbing is often taken for granted until something goes wrong so it’s important to check on things or have them built the right way the first time. Your plumbing network includes all of the water waste and water supply lines which flow from the street through the foundation of your home. From here, water that is supplied to the plumbing fixtures including where the showers, bathtubs, and sinks are installed.
Your new home plumbing network by code is required to keep your home safe. This includes installing an anti-scald valve on your showerheads to keep water from getting too hot. And installing traps to keep sewer gases from leaking into your home at each fixture. These traps help to prevent hair or other debris and other items which fall down the drain such as valuable from getting stuck inside your waste system. In addition, drain waste pipes are required to enable sewer gases to be pushed out through your roof.
This plumbing code should be inspected by a professional who will check the pipes while they are being installed and then again once the home is finished getting built. They will check the gas line installations to make sure the plumbing codes are being followed as there are specialized tools and materials which are similar to those used for water and sewer lines. Gas lines usually flexible stainless steel, flexible copper pipe, or black iron and it is distributed by a manifold or single pipeline that has others that branch from it.
Your plumbing includes….
Your plumbing includes the hot water heater which is either powered by oil, propane, gas, or electricity. Direct vented water heaters are most common if they are powered by gas. Other than that, it may be power vented. These terms refer to how the gas which is generated by the hot water heater end up being released from your home which is crucial to the health of your family. Power and direct vented gas water heaters force combustion gases from flowing back into the house and, in fact, force it out of the home.
Hot water heaters are measured by an Energy Factor (EF). Tanks with greater than 0.88 for electric hot water heaters and 0.56 for gas powered water heaters are recommended. There are instantaneous water heaters and heat pump water heaters to consider as upgraded options. And there is certainly a range of efficiency when choosing from the variety of hot water heaters available, so take the time to learn your options and choose the unit with best benefits and features suited to your home and budget. Also, learn whether the capacity of your hot water heater will be enough for the number of occupants in your home.
Summary
To summarize, when building a new home plumbing system learn if there is a safety measure in place to prevent your pipes from rupturing such as a water heater expansion tank. How the efficient your hot water heater is and exactly how it will expel gases from your home. If an instantaneous hot water heater or heat pump unit is best. What the expected delay will be to heat up the water in the bathrooms and if a circulation system would be helpful to minimize this delay. In doing so you will keep your new home running at optimal efficiency while increasing its value.