Glenn KatzOverall Strategy
For the plumbing system, I have three stacking systems of trunk and branch lines, one for each of my restrooms. On the following floor plan of the first floor, you can see how I divided the larger restroom (left) into two systems, as they flow on opposite walls, and the single restrooms (right) into one system since they share the same wall.
Plumbing System Elements
Multi stall restrooms - I have installed three floor mounted toilets, and one elevated sink.
Plan View
3D View
Single stall restrooms - I have installed the same components, but only one toilet. These restrooms follow ADA spacing requirements.
Plan View
3D View
Piping System
In the following two photos, you can see the stacking restrooms that span all five floors, the first photo showing simply the plumbing and piping elements, and the second, their placement, in the architectural model.
3D plumbing
3D with context
A Closer Look
Multi-stall: This is the floor plan view with realistic shading, can see the elements of plumbing vs. piping, the colored outlines indicating which piping type.
Connecting the Trunks and Branches
Thin Lines
Angled North Elevation - this angle shows the sanitary and cold water routing to the toilets
Realistic Shading
Thin Lines
Angled West Elevation - this angle shows all the plumbing lines for one side of the double restroom, with the height differences for the domestic hot water, the domestic cold water, and the angled sanitary line.
Realistic Shading
Thin Lines
Single stall: This is the floor plan view with realistic shading, can see the elements of plumbing vs. piping, the colored outlines indicating which piping type.
Connecting the Trunks and Branches
Angled North Elevation - this angle shows the placement of the trunk lines, the sanitary lines for the north sink and toilet, the hot water routing to the sink, and the cold water routing to both the sink and the toilet. This pipe orientation is simply reverses for the mirroring stall.
Realistic Shading
Thin Lines
Angled West Elevation - this angle shows the branches of the hot water, cold water, and angled sanitary lines, and demonstrates the different heights utilized for each to ensure smooth routing.
Realistic Shading
Thin Lines
Challenges
Overall, it was challenging to figure out where to even put the trunks, how many I needed, and how they would be most effective, since in the demo video they were all aligned on the same wall and had a mechanical room, which I did not have space for. I ended up just having the trunks in the corner, as seeing piping is not the end of the world at this point, but if I were to redo the architectural design I would definitely add a little plumbing room.
With the actual routing process, I had a lot of challenges initially with accidentally making the hot and cold lines also angled, which I didn’t realize was automatically still there since I did the sanitary lines first, and this resulted in a lot of frustration with routing pipes at angles because I would successfully create a path that would go around another pipe but it would always give an error when I tried to finish and connect it to the trunk. Also, I didn’t realize that you couldn’t do a less than 90 degree angle, so I had to keep that in mind as well. The other challenge was on the single bathroom, as when I would attach one cold water branch to the trunk, I couldn’t attach the other branch on the other side because it had already made a tee-connector. I worked around this by also offsetting the heights of the two branches for each type of water (as seen in the photo directly above), but I know that there is a four way connecter but I couldn’t figure out how to do it.