Explore the process of connecting hot and cold water systems for bathrooms in MEP4.0 in this instructive article. Gain practical insights on how to run the systems together, negotiate around existing pipes, and collaborate with architects for necessary adjustments.
Key Insights
- The article details the steps involved in connecting hot and cold water systems for bathrooms, emphasizing the ease of tying them together into the same line.
- Tips are provided on how to navigate around existing pipes and the importance of avoiding clashes between different systems.
- The author advises on potential collaboration with architects when structural adjustments are needed, such as increasing the size of a wall to accommodate vent piping.
This lesson is a preview from our Revit MEP Certification Course Online (includes software & exam). Enroll in this course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.
Welcome back to the VDCI video course content for MEP 4.0. In the previous videos, we went ahead and finished up connecting our hot and cold water for our classroom sinks. Now we want to go ahead and start talking about the hot and cold water for our bathrooms. We currently have stands; we currently have the two drops.
So you can see here that we have these drops here, and drops on the second floor, and then obviously drops on the opposite bathroom. Realistically, this is pretty easy. We're actually going to run all of these together so that they're all tied into the same line.
So what I'm going to end up doing is, I know that if I look at my plan here, if I go to my Level 1 Plumbing, I'm going to zoom out and you can see I'm at this toilet. You can see that this is in the center of the wall. So I have that in the center of the wall.
Now I could say, hey, I'm going to run these maybe offset a couple of different ways. You could say, hey, I'm going to move this guy, and I could drag it back so I'm running one kind of inside the middle of the wall.
I'm running them side by side. I could decide to run them side by side, or I could also say, hey, I'm going to run one higher or lower. I want to go ahead and run them side by side because the higher or lower gets kind of crazy with our different pieces here.
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We're going to run them side by side, and we may need to talk to the Architect and go, hey, Architect, we need more space. This wall is currently—I can tell—it’s just a six-inch metal stud wall. This might not be big enough for all my vent piping and all that kind of stuff.
So I may need to ask the Architect, hey, we need to make this maybe like an eight-inch wall or something along those lines. But we're going to go ahead and work this out. So what I want to go ahead and do is, let's go and look at my 3D view.
We have a couple of things going on here because we're going to have to also navigate around all these other pipes. We're not going to worry so much about it right now, but we obviously don't want to be clashing with ourselves. But looking at this here in 3D, what I can go ahead and do is I'm just going to select this pipe.
I'm going to right-click, Draw Pipe, and I'm not necessarily going to draw the entire thing. It might be a little bit easier to draw in plan. You kind of get these wild angles as you start doing it.
If you can get to that 90 degrees, it actually works out really, really nicely. So you can see there—select it, right-click, Draw Pipe. And again, if I can get that 90-degree value, which I can—there we go.
And there we are. Now, right now they're in the same exact location. So what I'm going to do is, once I've drawn that, I'm going to slide one over to one side of the wall, slide another over to the other side of the wall.
And there we go. So I have all those there. Let's see here—the height of this pipe.
Now we need to make sure our heights are okay. So what we want to go ahead and do is see that this is 2 foot 3 and a quarter. This is 2 foot 3 and a quarter.
So let's look at this in 3D. We need to move our hot and cold water. Well, no—we can actually just leave them up, and then there will be a portion of it coming up.
If you had one in line, you could go straight into it. But let's see how it works. If I go here—and it may not work because we're too close. Actually, what may work better is if we run them one underneath another. But I'm going to kind of tighten them up and see how it goes.
If I go to Modify, I'm going to use Trim/Extend Multiple Elements. Let's see—it’s like the cold water.
Select this—and it doesn't notice that I can do multiple. So I can just go all the way down. And since there isn’t enough room for our fittings now in this last one, what I could actually do is just trim this because this is the end of the line.
And there we are. Same with the hot water—I could just trim this here, end of the line.
Then I'm going to go Trim/Extend Multiple Elements here to here, and then pick all my hot water pipes. So it's pretty simple to go ahead and tie all of those guys in. As you can see there, it's pretty simple.
I can also decide to move that up if I wanted to. If I wanted to change this elevation—now that I have it tied in—let's say I wanted these to be at like six feet for whatever reason, I go ahead and change that, and it would go ahead and raise that up. Now, if I moved it down though—let's say I move just like two feet below the elevation of my pipes—it's going to give me many errors that say, oh, I'm going to lose all of those connections.
We don't want to do that. So I'm going to go ahead and leave it kind of where we had it. There we go.
Let's move on to the next one. So I'm going to go up here to my other first floor. Let's go ahead and take care of the first floor first.
So there—I'm going to go ahead and Draw Pipe. Make sure I'm kind of on that 90. There we go.
Sometimes I find that I might draw it in 3D first, and then it might just be easier to adjust in plan view. So I go to my Level 1 Plumbing Plan. Let's go to the right one.
I'm going to go ahead—tab select. And I might need to—you know how close this is here—I might need to take this guy and move it up. I can move those closer together. Then what I want to go and do is just grab this pipe and bring it down.
Actually, I don’t even need to do that. I could trim this right now. I'm going to trim here and here.
Oh, it's a little too close—the fittings won’t work. So I'm going to trim that.
I just use my directional arrows to adjust it a little bit. Then I'm going to trim the hot water pipes together. There we go.
Now I use my Trim/Extend Multiple Pick—here, here, here. Well, since I have it on multiple, I can just go down the line and pick those pipes. There we go.
And the same thing here with the hot water—there, there, there, there, there. I might need to go ahead and actually align some of these water pipes. I'm not going to worry about it too much right now because we're going to do something with those later on.
We're going to talk about how we can change these sizes to better match what we have for those sinks.
