Explore the intricacies of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) drawings from the perspective of an architect. Understand how professionals from different disciplines collaborate on projects and the importance of schedules, symbols, and legends in MEP drawings.
Key Insights
- The article provides an in-depth understanding of MEP drawings, focusing on how professionals in architecture, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work together to create comprehensive project plans.
- Schedules play a significant role in MEP drawings, detailing the manufacturer, model number of the equipment, as well as specific electrical equipment requirements and cubic capacity for things like forced air distribution.
- The article emphasizes the importance of symbols and legends in MEP drawings, demonstrating how they guide the understanding of specific components, their manufacturers, models, and electrical requirements.
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Let's start looking at some MEP mechanical, electrical, and plumbing drawings. Now, I'm an architect, not a mechanical, plumbing, or electrical engineer. I normally work with people who are professionals in those particular disciplines.
This first page is the M1.0 sheet off of our project. You can see in the top left corner that there are some schedules. And let's just zoom in on those.
You can see that we have four schedules that are being shown. On the left-hand side, you can see what they are calling the mark or the symbol. Then in the schedule, they're talking about who the manufacturer is, what the model number of the equipment is, and then specific electrical equipment requirements, and cubic capacity for things like forced air distribution, and so on and so forth.
So here we're talking about the forced air unit, which would be the heater. There's an area down here for condensers and cooling, and also exhaust fans and range hood schedules. So again, they have a mark that talks about the symbol that we will see on the drawing, who makes it, what the model is, and the electrical requirements.
You'll also notice down here in the bottom that there is a legend. So that when we look at the drawings themselves, and when we see these symbols, there's also an abbreviation, which frequently goes with those symbols, but most importantly, a description about those requirements. When I zoom back on the page, you can see that the mechanical engineer has placed some standard details into their drawing.
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And let's just zoom in for a second. What you'll notice is that it says that the scale is none. So these are drawings that are not to scale.
They are typically representative for installation purposes. So here they're talking about a ceiling-mounted exhaust fan. So here's the fan.
Here's the symbol. And we would once again go over to our schedule to find out more about the particular symbol, and then how the exhaust fan is being directed outside. You can see that it's calling out, for example, roofing by others, because just like in our drawings, in the architectural drawings, we don't want to duplicate engineering information in our drawings, and they don't want to replicate or duplicate architectural information in their drawings.
Now let's go on to the second sheet for our project. You can see that this is the M2.0 sheet, the HVAC floor plan for our particular unit. When you look into the drawing, you can see that they have the symbols in here for the different air diffusers that are being used.
And if I zoom in, you can see that, for example, they're calling out the size of the unit and then the capacity of those particular units. You can see that they've included notes for different things. You can see, for example, there's an exhaust fan right there above the toilet.
Over on the right-hand side of the drawing, we have our dryer schedules. So this is talking about the dryer vent notes and the expectations of those dryer vents. We also have the diffuser schedule, which summarizes the diffuser information that we see in the plan.
So you can see, for example, in the informal dining kitchen area, informal dining kitchen area, you can see that it's an eight by eight. You can see the capacity, the 150 cubic foot per minute, and then we also have the capacity that's being presented there.
