Connecting Hot and Cold Water Lines for Second Floor Plumbing: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating Plumbing Connections on the Second Floor: Practical Steps and Tips for Plumbing Layouts

Explore the step-by-step process of connecting and creating drops for hot and cold water lines in construction, using a specific software tool. This detailed guide explores everything from drawing pace to pipe fitting, with a focus on the construction of sanitary systems.

Key Insights

  • The guide covers the process of drawing pace, constructing pipes, and creating fittings with a focus on sanitary systems. This includes working through the structure floor by floor and handling elements such as connectors, P traps, and vertical portions.
  • The tutorial provides practical advice on how to manage potential errors and difficulties during the construction process. This includes suggestions to break up tasks into smaller component parts, the possibility of deleting and recreating elements that go wrong, and how to discuss potential architectural changes with stakeholders.
  • The guide also offers practical tips for using the software more effectively, such as using the 'PF' shortcut to create plumbing fittings, ensuring you're snapping to the end point, and rotating the pipe fittings for accurate placement. Advice is also given on saving your project regularly and adjusting sensitive mouse settings to improve control.

Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.

We're going to continue with creating our drops and everything for our hot and cold water lines, and our connection for the lavatory. So I'm going to go to the second floor here. Again, I'm going to draw my little three-inch piece, zero space three.

I'm also going to go ahead and create my pieces for my cold water and hot water. I'm going to go ahead and turn off my slope. Don't need that.

Here. So again, I'm just clicking the connectors. It's a very simple, very straightforward process.

If you want to get these aligned, you can go ahead and do that. There we go. I want to go ahead and put my Pipe Fitting in here.

So I'm going to Pipe Fitting. I have my P-trap. Make sure you're getting that endpoint. Click, make sure it turns green. And then I can click on the rotation. There we are, and draw pipe.

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There we go. I'm just going to go ahead and leave that for right now. We'll come back and clean it up later, just so that we can progress through this faster. I find it's a little bit easier to just go to every fixture, put them in, put them in, put them in, and then start making some adjustments.

So I'm going to create my section, go down farther. Again, I'm still on my second floor here. So again, click on the connector, drag down. I can go zero space three.

Oh, I went off to the side a little bit. There we go. Here, come down. I'm just going to choose whichever one—it's okay.

And I'm going to make these a little bit longer. You know, I know that I'm going to clean them up later, but I need to have a vertical and then go over. Let's go ahead and go to the first floor.

Oh, I forgot my P-trap. Let's go ahead, Pipe Fitting. You can also use PF.

There's that. Rotate, rotate, rotate. And there we go. I'm ready to go to the next one.

Actually, excuse me. I need to go to my first floor. So again, I'm going to create the vertical portion of the sanitary.

I'm going to create—it doesn't matter. Cold water can be first. That's fine.

Let's go there. Hot water, go there. I find that sometimes breaking up this task—I'm ready to move my section—breaking up this task into just little component parts helps.

And like say, "Hey, I'm going to go through and create all the pieces on here. And then we'll come back and tie everything in." Sometimes it makes it a little bit easier.

So there's that. I'm ready to go ahead. I move my section.

I'm on the next one. Zero space three here. And then I'm just going to click on these connectors.

And if I want to get these in the right plane, I can go ahead and do that. Let's go ahead and create our Pipe Fitting. So PF is the shortcut I'm using there.

And then I can keep rotating it. There we go. Go to my second floor.

Again, click on my connector, three inches here. Go down. Again, just choose whichever connector is on the top there.

There we go. PF for my Pipe Fitting and work my way around. I'm going to keep going. Make sure you save your project.

And I'm going to keep moving on. So I'm going to grab my section, move it to the next one. Again, it's kind of a repetitive process.

We have a lot to do. We're just going to continue to work through it and keep going.

If you feel like you've messed up, that's fine. Go ahead and delete and just recreate it. It's not a big deal.

If the software decides to be kind of funny, you know, I might say, "Oh, I want to make these a little longer." Okay, there we go. Let me get these aligned.

I can just drag them up so they're aligned. And you can kind of start to see how this starts out in plan.

So you can start to see how these are breaking up in plan—how the pipe is coming in between the hot and cold water, so on and so forth. I'm going to come here, go down zero space three here. Okay.

Again, I know it's a lot of these to go ahead and do. But you know what, it's really great practice to do it here as many times as you possibly can. So there's no problem.

There we go. I need to put in my Pipe Fittings. So there we go.

Rotate, rotate. And you could break it up in different ways. If you wanted to go through and do all your connectors first, then put the Pipe Fittings on.

That's a fine way to do it too. I don't have to do each sink individually right off the bat. So here I can go ahead there, zero space three.

So in this instance, I'm going to do all of my connector drops first. There we go. And then I'll come back and do my fittings later.

Can't change for whatever reason. It's giving me that error. Zero space three inches.

There we go. Boom. Domestic cold water there.

And we may need to talk to the Architect on this one and go, "Hey, I need you guys to put a chase in here. I need you to make this like an eight-inch stud wall or something along those lines to be able to fit all this piping in here." Again, that's just a talk with the Architect, but we finished the first and second floors of this bathroom.

Let's go ahead and continue to the upper one. So here I'm going to start on that first floor, come down zero space three inches. Let's go ahead.

Okay. Boom, boom. Click on that again.

Click on my connector. Boom, boom. There we go.

And then go to my second floor, and then I'll do the Pipe Fitting at the end. I find it's been a little easier to do the Pipe Fitting at the end, just so I don't interrupt my task at hand. But I understand if people want to do it in a different order.

If you do want to do it in a different order, feel free to go PF for my Pipe Fitting and then rotate this guy around. Same thing down here. Make sure you're snapping to that endpoint.

Did I get the Pipe Fitting on the previous one? Let me take this back. I'm just going to check real quickly. Nope.

I forgot it. Haha. Getting ahead of myself.

So sometimes, you know, that's why it's nice to break it up into these individual steps: go through, do all the connectors, and then go through and do the fittings. There we go. We've got that.

We've got this one all good to go. I'm going to come here again. Zero space three inches.

Click on the fitting. I don't care which one. I'm just going to do the cold water first.

That just happens to be the one that's popping up first. And again, if you want to over-exaggerate these pipes a little bit, we're going to come back and clean them up. I like to kind of do the three inches on this one though, just because I know that we're going to be connecting that P-trap in there, and keep working your way through.

I know it's a lot. That's okay. We're getting good practice in.

I'm going to again move it to the next one. And if you need to pause the video and, you know, take it a little slower, by all means, go ahead and do that. I know I'm moving pretty quickly. Domestic cold water.

There we go. Again, I'm just clicking these connectors and working my way through. So you just click the connector.

I drag down to make my pipe. I draw my pipe in. I'm going to go ahead and get these back aligned.

Let's see. I need to go up here. Zero space three inches.

Make sure that you're straight up and down. That's going to be another key aspect. If you have a very sensitive mouse, it may be a little tougher.

You can always try turning down the sensitivity of your mouse if it has that functionality. Sometimes that's kind of a nice thing to do. There we go.

I'm ready for my Pipe Fitting. So PF. There we go.

Rotate, rotate. There we go. Rotate, rotate.

Boom, boom. Perfect. I'm going to hit escape to back out, and I'm ready to move on to the next one.

So again, I'm going to move my section. I'm going to come in here, click on my connector for whatever I want to do. My sanitary is going to be three inches, so zero space three inches.

I'm going to click here, go down, domestic cold. And I could say I want this to be a specific length too, if I wanted it to. I'm not too terribly worried about it, but let's say that you knew you wanted that pipe length to be six inches.

You could go ahead and set it up to be that way. So there, zero space three inches. And then I'm going to click on this connector, get my cold water.

Boom, boom. My hot water. Boom.

Ready for my fitting. So PF. There we go.

Keep rotating around. Come up to here. Make sure I get that endpoint and then rotate it around.

Escape, escape. Great. And I had a little—you might see a P-trap in the plan.

Don't worry about that. You can just zoom in and zoom out, and it'll go away. And the last one in this line, I'm going to go ahead and click on the sanitary.

There we go. Take this guy, domestic cold. So I could be very specific with this.

If I knew I wanted it to be a very specific value, I just typed in zero space six. So again, zero space six. Come over, pick.

And there we go. So I could always make that six inches if I wanted to. Here, come down.

Zero space three inches. And then here, the cold water. Let's say I want it to be a six-inch drop.

Zero space six inches. Zero space six inches. Boom.

And there we go. We finished that bank of lavatories. Great.

I'm going to go ahead and save the file. And when we come back, we'll continue. See you then.

photo of Tyler Grant

Tyler Grant

Revit MEP Instructor


Tyler Grant is a BIM Manager a Delawie. A dedicated, goal-oriented, and experienced architect. Tyler has managed multiple design/build BIM projects from inception to construction completion, through all phases. Technology-driven and experienced educator to train and instruct users, both novice and advanced, in the workflow and processes of the modern architecture, engineering, and construction field. 

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How to Learn Revit MEP

Specialize in MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) systems within Revit for advanced design solutions.

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