Discover the intricacies of mechanical, electrical and plumbing drawings, focusing on the layout of waste lines and vents in a residential project. This detailed review covers the symbols and abbreviations used, and the typical requirements for drawing presentation in different professional disciplines.
Key Insights
- The article details the process of diagramming waste lines and vents for a residential project, including specific sizing requirements like a three inch waste for the toilet and a two inch waste for the tub.
- Design considerations such as the placement of vents, in this case hidden behind the ridge of the roof to satisfy a homeowner's request, are also discussed in the article.
- General guidelines for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing drawings are provided, including the use of an overview sheet that lists symbols, abbreviations, code requirements, and schedules, as well as the inclusion of plan drawings and isometrics for clarity and installation.
Note: These materials are provided to give prospective students a sense of how we structure our class exercises and supplementary materials. During the course, you will get access to the accompanying class files, live instructor demonstrations, and hands-on instruction.
Now this is the waste drawings, so let's just zoom in on this bathroom. So what I have going on is I have the waste lines from the tub, from the toilet, and from the sink. You can see that there are sizing requirements, so I have an inch and a half inch waste line for the lav, a three inch waste for the toilet, and a two inch waste for the tub.
Pan over to this one, similar situation, three inch waste that's splitting and it's going to the lav, to the tub, and then to the sinks that are over there. If I look at the isometrics, we have a similar kind of thing from before. Now what's happening is when it's solid it's going down, when it's dashed it's going up.
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So one of the requirements on this house was that the owner did not want to see any bathroom vents on the front of the house. So one of the reasons, for example, that this bathroom vent comes up over and goes up again was to have the bathroom vent hiding behind the ridge of the roof. So again, I have my lavatory, this is the master bathroom, this is the Jack and Jill bathroom, this is the bathroom we were just looking at, and the kitchen is over here on the right.
So you can see that it says DW for dishwasher, cold water feed, and so on and so forth. But you can see that it's showing the sizes of the different waste lines as they exit the house. So this is how I have a clean out that's going on right here, but again, let's go back to the master bathroom, that we have the water closet, WC1, we have the bathtub, we have a wall clean out, WCO, and so between the lavatory and the bathtub we have a vent that comes up, goes over, and then vents to roof.
Because again, this area over here is the front of the house and you can understand that the ridge of the house would be, the roof ridge would be right around in that area. So what's happening is we have the Jack and Jill bathroom, we have the water closet or toilet, and the bathtub coming up, and the vent is going over, and then it's ending up exposing or daylighting on the backside of the roof. I just think these are very interesting drawings and they're also a whole lot of fun to do electronically.
So this has been a general but relatively detailed review of the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing drawings. These drawings tend to be very similar in residential and commercial projects. Now once you start getting into projects like hospitals and biotechnology facilities, they are much more extensive, significantly much more extensive.
But the general rules pertain. We have an overview sheet that's going to list the symbols, that's going to list the abbreviations, any particular code requirements, and typically schedules. So the schedules will include the symbols, frequently the abbreviations, the manufacturers, and the components that are going to be used in the appropriate drawings.
We first give an overall view and then we'll go into the plan drawings and depending upon the professional discipline, all of the work will be presented in a plan orientation or frequently for clarity and installation, we will also have isometrics.