Drew McCathernYour Design Journal entries this week should highlight your design thinking and process in modeling:
- your plumbing system elements
Since I am also incorporating radiant floors for heating purposes, my plumbing system design was largely focused on avoiding overlap with the radiant piping. To accomplish this, I stacked the majority of my restrooms on top of one another so that the piping systems could be contained within the outer walls of the building without impacting other mechanical elements. Additionally, I also placed bathrooms back-to-back and immediately adjacent to mechanical rooms to house all of the necessary plumbing systems without needing to utilize excess floor or ceiling space.
- your piping systems
My piping systems include cold water (modeled in blue), hot water (modeled in red), grey water (supply modeled in purple, return modeled in grey), and sewage systems (modeled in green), which interact with one another in an effort to champion water conservation and support the initial design goals laid out in the onset of the project design.
- any special plumbing system challenges that you encountered and how you overcame them
I initially struggled finding adequate space for all of the pipes so that they wouldn’t interfere with or overlap with existing components in my respective models. To overcome the challenge, I redesigned the interior walls around and between the bathrooms (from 6 1/8” to 12”) and offset the respective components accordingly. I didn’t model an additional boiler for the hot water system (because I already have one for the radiant floor system), but I would be curious to see if additional components are needed to meet the demand for the facility during peak loading (winter) conditions.