Tying in Plumbing Stacks: Best Practices and Efficient Methods

In the previous video, we went ahead and got our main in here, and we'll change the sizes a little bit later. But what I want to go ahead and do now is start to tie in our sinks here.

So there are a couple of different ways to do this. I feel like there really isn't a wrong way, but there is a most efficient way, especially when it comes to the sloped piping. We started at our highest point here, going all the way down to our lowest and creating that system.

Now, what I can go ahead and do is draw from this pipe to get to these individual locations. But what I'm going to be doing now is sloping up. So let me show you here.

I'm going to go up to Pipe, and I'm going to change a few of my settings here. I'm going to go ahead and make sure your diameter is three inches—excuse me, not three feet—that would be a very large pipe.

We want our diameter to be three inches for these stacks. The middle elevation, I'm not going to worry about that because we're going to use a tool that's automatically built here in Revit to get our elevation, depending upon where this pipe is at. I'm going to go to Inherit Elevation.

Learn Revit MEP

• Nationally accredited
• Create your own portfolio
• Free student software
• Learn at your convenience
• Authorized Autodesk training center

Learn More

I click on Inherit Elevation, and then I'm going to change it to Slope Up. And since we're using a three-inch pipe, I'm going to be sloping at a quarter of an inch per foot. This Inherit Elevation feature

Allows me to set my middle elevation to be whatever the middle elevation is of the pipe that I select or choose. So what I'm going to end up doing is having this act as a floor cleanout here, so I'm not worried about that. I'm going to go ahead and I have that Inherit Elevation set to Slope Up, a quarter inch per foot, and three-inch diameter.

There we go. I'm going to go ahead and start kind of anywhere here.

I'm going to come off at a 45. I might actually start up a little higher. But notice how, because I have the connectors on this, it's kind of giving me some locations.

So what I could do is come like this, come up, come up. I'm going to make sure I'm in the wall, but I don't want to click that connector.

There we go. When I come up now, I'm just going to change this to be like 30 feet or something, and then just click. That's going to give me the vertical rise.

The reason why I'm going 30 feet is because I know I have that second floor, and we'll look at it in section and all that kind of stuff and we'll change it around. I might need to move these guys over a little bit, so I can just grab them.

I should be able to move them, slide them over. And there we go. It's going to adjust my other pipes in the background.

OK, so let me go through this one more time. I'm going to go into my Systems tab. I'm going to go to Pipe.

I'm going to choose Inherit Elevation, Slope Up, quarter inch per foot. Make sure your pipe size is set to three inches. And there we go.

I could start a little higher up here, so I don't have to 45 over as far. I'm going to go ahead, pick, and drag up.

There we go. Pick, come over to the centerline of the wall, pick, and then I'm just going to take this up to 30 feet.

I'm not going to worry about this other portion because I'm going to delete it later on. Makes sense. You may need to adjust your hot and cold water lines.

That might be fine. I might actually want to do this. Let's see here—which one is it?

So my hot is here on this side, cold is on that side. So I'm going to move this guy over here.

And I want to move my cold over there and start to split that a little bit so it's in the right location. Perfect.

Now I can just work down my pipe my way, doing that for all of these. So what I would end up doing is under my Systems tab, I go to Pipe. I'm going to go Inherit Elevation, Slope Up, three inches, Sanitary.

I'm going to go ahead, pick here, drag over. Pick there, go over here. I'm going to go up to 30 feet.

And there we go. Again, I'm not really worried about where I'm clicking on that one, just because I'm putting it off to the side. And again, now, the one thing is that when you do these in quick succession like this, what you'll need to do is always hit Inherit Elevation.

I don't know why this button does not stay connected. We want to make sure that we're there. We're there. I'm going to drag to my 45 again.

Boop. Let's see here. It's not wanting to find it.

And that's OK if it doesn't necessarily find that snap off of that. That's OK. I'm going to come here, come here, change to 30.

Pick. There we go. Again, I have to go back to Inherit Elevation. Now, if you read the tooltip here: Inherit Elevation inherits the elevation of elements being snapped to. Optionally, press the spacebar to inherit both elevation and size for the duct or pipe being snapped to. So the spacebar can be nice.

The problem is it's going to give us the wrong size pipe. So it's just easier to click on Inherit Elevation and do it that way. Same thing here.

I'm going to go off of my 45. Let's see—is it going to give me snaps? No, that's OK.

We can always adjust it later on. I'm going to go somewhere roughly in the center of the wall. You're just going to work your way down and do this.

Now obviously, it's a lot of work to go ahead and do all these pipes. So again, Inherit Elevation. You can always change where that 45 is, and we will be able to slide it down and do whatever we need to.

And there—boop—there we go. I'm going to come down here, Inherit Elevation. There, make sure I'm on a 45.

There to here. And I'm wondering—it may not be. I'm going to change this to 30 feet to create the vertical.

And then here and here—elevation back here. I'm wondering if it's a view range thing on why I'm not necessarily getting those snaps, but that's OK. It very well could be.

Inherit Elevation. I'm going to come here, 45 off. Yep, that one’s wanting to snap for some reason. Sometimes Revit does very odd things with its snaps, and I just kind of say, OK Revit, do what you want.

We have our ways of working around it. And we're going to have to coordinate some of our pipe locations here, and that's perfectly fine. I'm going to go here, come over.

It's not wanting to give it to me. That's OK. There. I forgot to do my vertical—so Inherit Elevation.

Now it's wanting to give me my snaps. Thank you. 30 feet.

You can draw that piece in section. I just find it easier to put it in when you're there. Right there.

Here. Here. And there we go.

Let's go and take a look at this in 3D. I'm going to select a couple of these pieces, look at it in 3D. Let me expand my section box here a little bit so we can start to see how these things are working.

And nice—we have some plumbing. We have some plumbing risers.

If I go to this all the way up as high as I need to, you can see the extra pieces that I've created. I could just go ahead and select and delete these. Those little pieces that weren’t in my view because they were out of my view range previously—I can just go ahead and delete them.

Again, these are just so that I can tie into my plumbing stack. Perfect. And there we go.