#49 - Poo, Plumbing & Heating: Mechanical Plans Explained For Your Renovation

Early in your renovation, you need to lock down your M&E plan - mechanical and electrical. In this we deep dive into the dirty business of mechanical plans - waste pipes, connection points, pumps, heating, toilets, showers, drainage, and more. The decisions you make here will have a big impact later in your renovation, and there are some important things you should know.

We will be covering electrical plans (including Jenny's favourite topic - lighting!) next week.

Key Topics in This Episode:

• Why plumbing, drainage and heating plans must be decided early in a renovation.
• Toilets, waste pipes and the impact of pipe routes on layout and design.
• Boxing off waste pipes.
• Hidden vs visible toilet cisterns.
• Macerators (e.g. Saniflo).
• Common bathroom planning mistakes.
• Boilers, water tanks, combi-boilers, and other hot water systems.
• How gravity affects water flow.
• Radiators, zoning and smart heating decisions to be aware of.
• Pumps, drainage challenges and avoiding costly issues later.
• BTU calculator for checking radiator requirements.
• Pipe to pipe distance between radiators.
• Temperature knobs on radiators.
• Sump pump if your drain pipes are low compared to the water table.

Follow the podcast on Instagram @ripitup_podcast_official, or follow us - Jenny is @workerscottage and Kate is @victorianrathmines

Transcript

Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to a brand new season of Rip It Up. Every renovation teaches you something, but it's only after you've lived through the dust, the delays, and the decisions, and then done it again like me, that the real lessons appear. This season, we're revisiting our biggest renovation topics, not with theory, not with optimism, but with hindsight.

Process planning, lighting, kitchens, bathroom windows, what worked, what didn't, and what we'd never do the same way again. This is what we wish we knew then. 

Jen: Welcome back to the podcast hi Kate.

Kate: Hi, Jen. 

Jen: You survived for your, your ski holiday at the weekend. This makes me very 

Kate: I'm all in one piece. No pulls or strains or broken

limbs. So it was success by all accounts, because I'm not the best gear.

Jen: Well done. It's not easy. 

Kate: It is certainly not easy. It's physical enough, but then like it was the first time I actually really enjoyed skiing, I think, and

just like, you know, enjoyed like my dinners at night, I felt like you earned it, you know? Whereas you know when you go a lot a holiday and you're out here, like in fifth dinner, you're like, oh, I [00:01:00] feel like I haven't done any exercise and haven't done anything in

so long that I feel rotten.

But skiing, you actually feel like, yeah. I've earned this wine and food

tonight. 

Jen: yeah. You're actually hungry

and you're, you're not bored. Like you've been busy all day and you're looking forward to relaxing. It's so nice. 

Kate: Yeah.

It was lovely though. Lovely.

Jen: Today we're talking about our next, this episode. And the next episode we're gonna be talking about mechanical and electrical. And what we mean by that based on mechanical is all to do with like your plumbing, your drains, et cetera, electrical, where do you put your switches, your plugs, and crucially your lighting 

plan. 

Kate: are crucially the most important 

Jen: crucially, our favorite thing. It is,

Kate: You may as well not renovate if you don't give your lighting plan enough. Enough thought.

Jen: I dunno why you're laughing, saying that like that's 

Kate: I know. no, 

Jen: That is true. 

Kate: is true.

it's something I learned, I think the hard way. 

Yeah. 

Jen: it's crucial. 

Okay. So 

Kate: what a glamorous topic. Let's talk about, you know, poo pipes and waste [00:02:00] water.

Like, but it's, it's something that is so. It, it's almost impossible to change after the fact, right? Because you're talking about big pipes and they're in your walls and you're under your floor, and there could be concrete on top of them. There could be under floor and like it's, it's impossible to do afterwards.

So like without thinking about the layout of your rooms, you need to think about the layout of your mechanical

elements of your build first.

'cause it can change it. 

Jen: Yeah. So this episode all about mechanical and.

Kate, we're gonna be talking about toilets a lot. Okay? So listener, if you're eating or about to eat, maybe just save this one for a little bit later. We're gonna, you know, we're not gonna be holding back. Um, but what you mentioned there is so important because like, it's, it's something you don't know how to do.

If you're approaching your first renovation, there's no way that you could know how to do this and what to think about and. The ways that it affects you. First of all, if anything goes wrong down the line, it is huge. Your floors are being ripped up, your walls are being ripped out. Like it's, it's a [00:03:00] disaster.

Like you do not want a burst pipe in your house, especially not a waste pipe. And the second thing that's really, really, really common, and you know, most people don't think about it and it's often one that just gets in the way of design when you're coming towards the end. Lovely phases of putting the final touches on is boxes in the corner of your room for pipes to go in that you just might not have planned for.

So it is really important. Okay, so first of all, the first thing you think about mechanical, and we're doing this early in this series 'cause it's something that comes really early. You need to have it laid out and planned really early 

Kate: and 

I think 

Jen: and obviously. 

Kate: don't even think about if they haven't done a renovation before or like underestimate maybe. 'cause you're kind of thinking like, oh we can pick, you know, our finish and our flooring. But like before any of that comes, like mechanical comes and like, that's the layout and the function of your rooms and

like you said, box sets that you may or may not want to hide.

Jen: Yeah. So what you need to think about is where is your water coming in? Where is your waste pipes going out? This could be [00:04:00] from your sink, from your shower, from whatever else, you know, your, your water dryer or whatever else. Um, where are those pipes going? And then how does that all fit in to the grander drainage system in your home?

And that's important 

to know. You're heating, sorry. Of course you're heating. Yeah.

Kate: no, because if you've like

a combi boiler, it might be a bit simpler, but if you have a standard cylinder, and I think you have 

a standard, 

do you have a 

Jen: I do, I have a, 

no, I have a standard 

cylinder because I love a bath and the combi boiler isn't, some combi

boilers are not quite up to scratch of, of filling a whole bath. So I just, I, I had the space for it. My, my plumber worked out a way to get it in under eves and, uh, I just felt it was better in the long term.

Kate: Yeah. And if you're not familiar, like a combi boiler will heat the water instantly, so you don't need like tanks. Whereas a standard kind of cylinder boiler will have a hot water cylinder usually beside your boiler or close by your

boiler. And then you'll have a water tank in your attic as well, 

So 

Jen: the combi bit and combi boiler is heater

and [00:05:00] water tank So the two things happen at once. It's, it's almost like a heating version of those coker. Boiling water taps, isn't it? Where the water comes in, it gets heated instantly, and then it goes out and you don't need to store it in a tank in the middle.

Kate: But I've heard a lot more people using combi boilers now, but I was always under the impression that it, it didn't have. The flow, first off to service a couple of taps or a couple of showers at the same time. So if you were a household that was likely to have two showers going in the morning at the same time, I don't think it's for you.

You'll probably lose pressure. Or like you said, the

volume and how much you'd need for a baths. Um, it mightn't be 

enough. Yeah. 

So that's 

Jen: but if you're a small house 

and you're tight on space and you're not, you know, having more than

one shower going at one.

time, most of the time, then it's a great option. 

Kate: Yeah. 

Jen: So that's what we need to think about. So you need to be looking at your plan. You need to have an idea of where the main drainage points are in your home.

This is important as well. 'cause if you're planning something like an extension, or even if you're just knocking out a back wall a little bit, um, knowing where [00:06:00] the main drainage points are on your property is important because the difference between extending a wall and having to move a drainage.

System versus not is, you know, tens of thousands of, of euros at a minimum. So just knowing where those are, working around them to the best, you know, possible effect is, is important. Um, and then crucially within your house, where's the toilet going? Where's the shower going? Where's the sink going? Where's the heating going?

Where are those key appliances? And then where did the pipes have to run through your house to get outside? And what does that mean for like, where do they then have to be boxed in? 'cause they're not necessarily gonna be run able to run through your walls. 

Kate: yeah. 

Exactly. 

Jen: they do run through your walls, they might be very noisy and you might want want that either.

Kate: And then

crucially, like your toilet waste pipe is a huge 

pipe, 

right?

Jen: This is the big one. This is the big 

one. 

Kate: it's the big one. It's the doozy. Literally. Um, it's uh. Uh, they're big, they're big. Soil pipes are like four inches. Like I know there's stai flows and these macerator and stuff you can put on, [00:07:00] which probably aren't ideal for servicing and that kind of stuff, but like a toilet waste pipe is big.

It has to go out somewhere, and it ideally doesn't have to, to have all these big bends and stuff on a that you'll get blockages, you know, so those kind of waste, that waste layout is so important. You can't just randomly put a toilet in a new position in your house and not check. You know where it's going.

I've seen PE people put like an en suite in the middle of their house and then they put a toilet and they're like, how do we get the waste out? Uh, because maybe the joists, if the joists, they're running in your favor, maybe you can run that, you know, under the floor, which parallel to the joists. But if the joists they're running perpendicular, then it's very hard to get a toilet waste out.

So, you know, it's not to be underestimated, I guess. And like I always say to people like, try and keep toilet root. Somewhat the same as where they already are. If you're renovating a house, um, it'll cause you a lot less hassle and probably be a lot tidier in terms of like box sets and things like that.

So like,

Yeah. unless you really, if, unless you're putting in something new, try And keep them kind of roughly where

they are. 

Jen: [00:08:00] Yeah. And if you do have to box it out, which is just gonna happen sometimes, right? You're just gonna have to put in like a, a pipe is gonna have to run down for whatever reason, like a corner of your room, and you're just gonna have to build like plaster a box around it. Um, and that might have to happen sometimes, but you want to know that early.

You might want to insulate it so it's not too noisy If it's in a room that's used often and there's gonna be people using, um, a toilet or shower or upstairs or whatever. And then you need to work it into the design. Right? So what we did, I'll actually, if anyone's watching this on, on YouTube, uh, what my builder did, excuse the mess now of my living room, but the.

There's a box pipe there in the corner of the living room beside my couch, right? So it's just a box that's in the corner of my room. And what the, what my builder decided to do was to put a dummy box on the other side of the room facing it so that it's symmetrical looking and he put lighting in there.

But you could put an alcove in there, you could put shelving in there. Like you can work, you know, it's not necessarily a bad thing, like it has [00:09:00] to, sometimes it just has to be there. But it's just knowing that in advance and working that into the design of your room so that you can. Um, that you can work around it is, uh, or worth work with it even is, is critical.

Kate: I think like, and look, you're gonna have an engineer or your main contractor's gonna do this layout, but it's important that you know the questions to ask. Like, where is it rooting out? You

know, like, am I gonna have box out? Am I gonna hear a toilet flush? Am my dining room 

when someone flushes a toilet upstairs?

Because honestly, that's what happens a lot of the time. A big toilet waste comes down into the corner of the room and they box it out. But you can still hear things through that if it's not insulated or you know, well put away. So like. It's just knowing to ask those questions, where are the waste going?

And then critically like if a waste pipe is going in upstairs, like how are they getting it out? Like they're not damaging your joists or they're damaging your floorboards, lifting up the floorboards, things like that. So it's just, um, being aware to ask the questions and see those roots before final kind of finishes and kind of concrete goes down, or like permanent

flooring and stuff like that, [00:10:00] that mightn't, uh, be the easiest to change after the fact. 

Jen: Now you mentioned Sani Flow and Macerator and listeners like this is where things are getting 

really gross now, right? This is not 

Kate: So like, I've actually had a saniflo in a rental apartment or a 

Jen: so this is where this, It's a, a mechanical device It has to be powered. It's mechanical device that takes what goes into your toilet and liquefies it 

Kate: so imagine a 

Jen: that it can go 

Kate: bullet on the 

back of your 

toilet. And then that neutral bullet has a pump attached to it. And why people put that in is because instead of a standard four inch toilet soil pipe, you can put in a two inch, which makes it a lot easier to root. Through your he rather than that huge wagon pipe that has to go through the hex.

So sometimes people put those macerator or those, uh, poo nutri bullets and a pump in instead. Look, sometimes they're an absolute necessary evil, but they have to be maintained. [00:11:00] And like I would always, you know, earn the side of caution. Be like, maybe that's not just not the pooing toilet in the house.

Like, obviously, obviously like. You know, maybe a guest might do it or something unknowingly, but like it'll still work, but maybe it's not the day-to-day pooing toilet and 100000000% not that you should ever put it down any toilet. No wipes even flushable wipes, anything. No, it'll just block up. And I did have a block up before

in my rental place and we literally had a poo nanny 

upstairs.

It 

was a disaster. 

Jen: Like it is an area of your house where

you do not want to add in any unnecessary maintenance. So you would really want to have your toilet in that area to bother putting one in like again. Maybe that is the answer for you. Maybe all of that sounds fine to you and you're like, that's okay. Yeah, no worries at all.

Um, it's worth it so that I can put the toilet in there and that's fine. That's absolutely fine, but just know what's involved going into it.

Kate: yeah. And then the other ways, they're not as like critical, we'll say it's just a standard [00:12:00] kind of sink waste. Like where are you putting in your sinks? Maybe your

washing machine. Um, plumbing and waste water as well. 

So just 

Jen: Your shower, all that kind of stuff 

Kate: Yeah, 

like you'll have a bit of wiggle room, but having general ideas of where those appliances or sinks or whatever or positions are 

gonna be, 

um, is important.

Equally, it's important to know if those. Feeds for the water and the waste are coming through the floors or out of the walls, depending on like if you have a different type of vanity or floating unit or something that you wanna hide the pipe. So just think about things like that. Like, oh, I've always wanted a floating vanity because my bathroom's small.

Well, then your pipe

work should come out of the wall and not out of the floor.

You'll see it. 

Jen: Yeah. And it's, that is, it's one to think about now as well because it's, if we go back to bathrooms for a second, 'cause bathrooms and kitchens are really, and heating is really where all of this comes into play. And we had an email actually from a listener, um, a few weeks back, um, who was talking about not knowing that when someone comes to you and says like, do you want your, your.

[00:13:00] Toilet to be, uh, behind the wall or to be like the cistern to be on show. Like, you won't know that. But that's actually something that you need to think about now because you need to know like, where's the connection point? Do you want to be able to see that cistern or, or do you care about that? Or do you just want that kind of floating toilet look?

So all of that is to be, is to be thought about now, where's that pipe coming out? How much space then does that mean? You have left. Like if you, you know, if that connection point is in a certain corner or against a certain wall and you need to think about, you're putting something up against it, like how much space does that leave for you?

Um, just on that actually. 'cause I do think that's an interesting one, is when you're choosing to, you don't have, you don't need to like, choose your toilet at this stage, but you do need to choose if it's gonna be a hidden cistern in behind the wall or if it's gonna be visible and. There's no arguing that a hidden one looks cleaner, don't get me wrong, like it's sleeker, but I still prefer just a really kind 

of basic looking like subtle kind of toilet with the cistern out, because those things can break, and if you need to fix [00:14:00] it, then you have to get in behind that wall and get to it.

So my preference is to go for one that's on show. 

Kate: Yeah, I agree. And I also think the flush button ones are much, I dunno, they're much more troublesome

from. From like just past ones I've had or experiences 

I've

had in

Jen: Do you mean the kind of thing, the plate on the wall 

thing 

Kate: just the plate of the wall. I just feel like the lever handles are just more mechanical. They're not translating like a button press to a lever action.

So like I just find some of those little button press ones have such finicky little

plastic bits attaching to essentially a lever 

Jen: yeah. And I actually often like want to, yeah, they break really easily.

Kate: Yeah. Well, like I, 

Jen: I want to put 

cleaning solutions into my sister and sometimes do you know.

Or sometimes you can just have a drop in water and you need, like, I just, I think having access to a cistern is worth it. 

Kate: Yeah, it is. Yeah. And 

Jen: That's my 2 

Kate: important to know that the toilet pan that you're going with as well, because some of them have like a ceramic waist integrated into them, say the more, uh, traditional style ones. [00:15:00] And it's important to know if

the waste is going straight out the back and out to the outside of your house.

Or 

Jen: you have kinda like a floating 

Kate: Yeah. Or it's turning down and into your floorboard. Um, so they're, they can be different on traditional toilets, but a lot of the newer toilets now are what they call fully shrouded or, you know, the back to

wall where like the ceramic goes all the way into the wall and all the pipe work's 

kind of hidden 

inside that. 

Jen: Yeah, and I love that. 

It's like, it's just a really clean look and it still gives you the easy to access if something goes wrong. I just think

that's, keep it simple. That's when it comes to toilets. 

Kate: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't wanna be dealing with that if you can at all. But yeah, those things are just all for consideration at this stage. You know, positioning of hot and cold water, you know, whether means water or your, your attic kind of tank water to the bathrooms where they're all coming

in and out.

Wall floor and then, um, bath way, shower waste, same 

kind of 

thing. 

Jen: Yeah, and radiators sometimes like you,

if you're having and all your radiators, maybe like I have under floor heating, for [00:16:00] example, downstairs, but I have towel radiators in the bathrooms and. All you need to think about at this stage is number one, where do they go and what does that mean for the design of your room?

And so therefore, where the connection points need to go. And then number two, is it, is that connection point coming out of the wall or is it going into the floor? So you know, if you want to have like a wall mounted radiation that's maybe sitting a bit higher, that's completely off the floor, then the connection point needs to be in the wall.

If you're okay with it sitting into the floor, that's fine too. You just need to know, and you need to know before, um, you have your floor going 

Kate: and I think your plumber should kind of guide you in terms of what size radiators here. But like you can do a little bit of a, you know, a guesstimate yourself online with BTU calculators, you know, put in the size of your room, the windows, insulation, that kind of jazz, and it will tell you what kind of BTUs you need for a room.

Typically, like a standardized bedroom might need 3000 BTUs or something like that. So you might decide to put. Two, two and a half thousand rads in there and you know, have them kind of, you know, at run on at 60% open or whatever. [00:17:00] Or you can have like one huge rad. So just familiarize yourself with like roughly the size of rad you need for the room, because then you'll be looking a little later, but the plumber will probably ask kind of quite quickly.

The, the pipe spacing for each rad. And that's not the width of the rad. If you actually look at the specs of radiators online, it says like, pipe to pipe distance. And that's what the plumber is looking for because that's what will be coming outta your floor or coming outta your wall or whatever and connecting to valves.

So, um, that's something worth familiarizing yourself with as well. 

Jen: Yeah, radiators is something that often get in the way. People forget and they're like, oh, where do I put it? And then all of a, it, it again, it's like the boxed in pipe. It really can affect the design decisions that you make in your, in your house later. Like, where do you put your couch? Where do you put your, you know, desk up against the wall?

Like anything, it's 

uh, 

Kate: and it's important to just know, I, I would recommend taking as many pictures as you can of pipes and pipe roots before floors go down. It. You'll never regret having those pictures on [00:18:00] your phone just if something does go wrong or something's not working perfectly, that you can go back and reference them.

We had an issue in this renovation that our front two bedrooms upstairs were not getting hot. The radiators were just not heating, and it was just the way they were on the circuit that it was kind of the path, at least resistance was heating all the other rads and it just wasn't off shooting to those front.

Rooms and we, we, we literally couldn't rectify by balancing rads or anything like that. Like we could tweak it tiny bits, but like not enough to get them anywhere close to the how hot the, the radiators in the back of the house were. Uh, but we ended up having to put those front ones on a different zone.

So it's worth knowing what's the root of your radiators? If you have radiators upstairs, where's it coming from? The hot water and what's the path it goes through to, to reach all the rats? And that will give you a good idea then of. One is not getting hotter. It's, you know, cool cooler than the rest. You just can't balance them.

You'll know kind of why,

Jen: yeah. Yeah.

Kate: um, all this glamorous stuff. All the [00:19:00] pipes and your walls. 

Jen: It's just like, again, it is, it's, it's, it's not rocket science. There's not that many connection points in a, in a typical house you only have so many bathrooms. You only have so many kitchens and you only have so many heating points. So, but it's just stuff that you'd have to think about earlier than you would.

Expect it's things that have impact decisions down the line in ways that you might not anticipate and you need to know about now. Um, and it's things that can be easily changed at the early stage of renovation and like can save you somewhat headache down the road 

Kate: For sure. Yeah. And for your heating, if you can, if the option's there to put in additional zones. I would say, why 

not like us having that zone at the front of the house now is great because we can kind of tweak the front of the house bedrooms a bit more than the back, which is all kind of more new construction and new windows.

Whereas the front ones are old windows, they're single glazed, you know, like we couldn't upgrade those windows. So they are two different kind of temperatures

naturally. So like having that extra zone actually makes it much more [00:20:00] efficient in 

terms of

heating. 

Jen: Yeah, if you've like bedrooms that are guest

rooms or something like that like you don't need them to be heating all day every day. You know where you might have the other bedrooms, heating, or some, or you know, downstairs bedrooms that you don't use or 

Kate: Or like if a really cold hallway, like it's probably not ideal to put your thermostat out there or your controls, you know, because like it'll never get up to temp and the rest of the house might be boiling or whatever.

So it's, you know, have a think about that as well, where your heating controls and where your thermostats are positioned, um, that they're getting an accurate

gauge of the overall temperature. You want that area or that part of the 

house. 

Jen: yeah. yeah. 'cause there, there's little therm, like thermometers in them that say the temperature is blah, blah, blah. Um, but it might be in that room, but it might not be in another room. 

So, um, 

Kate: And something, this is kind of a mechanical thing, and it's something I didn't do this time, mainly because I

just, I hate the the radiator valves at all, the numbers, the 

plasticy kind of 

ones. Do you know 

Jen: Oh, yeah, yeah, 

Kate: are they called? Um, TRVs, temperature regulated valves.

And I just bought plain brass ones. Like the [00:21:00] plumber absolutely hated me for it because he was like, you can't really dial those in. And they're, they don't close, close, you know, automatically kind of. Um, but yeah, that's just a watch out. It might be worth your while just getting TRVs, the actual ones with the dials that you can actually dial in and balance your radiators a little more visually and a bit more

kind of, you know, easily between

rooms. 

Jen: Yeah, that is good. The one that I was gonna talk about there was. The last thing to think about is while we're talking about mechanicals, you're we're, we're not really talking about heating yet, but at this stage, it is worth thinking about what kind of heating and water system you're going to have. So we talked about combi boilers, we talked about having separate heaters and tanks.

Some of it's gonna be dictated by the type of heat that's in your house, like whether it's gas or um, whether you're going with like an air to water or something like that. Kinda a system. But just what is your. Heating and water supply system going to be like, so I mentioned that I went with a water tank.

I also have a pump, [00:22:00] um, because mine is sitting upstairs, but it feeds an upstairs, um, bath and shower, and I love a bath. So I, I just, it was worth it to get like the separate tank and the pump, so I knew I could fill it. Um, like as we mentioned before, it can be boiler, could be worth it for some people, but like the number one thing, the number one component in. Heating and waste and pipe and all of this mechanical stuff is gravity, right? So like everything flows by gravity. So you need to think about where is your water tank going, and is it, is it high enough in your house for it to efficiently flow water through the rest of your house? And if not, do you need a pump? 

Kate: yeah, yeah, yeah. Pump. Yeah.

We should probably talk about pumps as well, you know, have 'em pump on your 

heating system. 

Jen: I've 

too. 

Kate: one anyway, but they'll also pump on your, your showers and stuff 

as well if 

you're not getting 

Jen: I have two pumps. I have a, I have a,

a pump for my water tank, which is worth it. Um, and then I have a sump pump outside in my back garden 'cause I dropped the floor of the ground floor. Um, 

[00:23:00] so, uh, the drainage, it's still above 

Kate: The water table. 

Jen: At the water table, which is fine, although 

the water table is like steadily rising 

now.

So I'm very glad of it. But it's not as high above the water table as

uh, my engineer would like it to be. So there was a bit of back and forth about would I get a sum pump or not. So this is a pump that's buried in my back garden. That just helps. It kicks on if it needs to, and it helps to pump out wastewater into the mains waste and drainage system.

And if you are dropping your floor, if you're below for whatever reason, or nearly be like at level with the water table, it's something to think about. It could be a very, like, they rarely break down. They're very easy to, you could bury them in the garden and it could be, it could save you a lot of money in the future.

Kate: Yeah. That's actually something that happened us in our last renovation, talking about pumps and. Boilers and boiler positioning. We thought we were very smart. We're like, we're gonna put everything in the attic, give this huge attic space, like it wasn't a converted attic space, but like we're gonna put the boiler up there and we're gonna put the, you know, tanks and all that.

It was a terrible idea actually, because [00:24:00] an old house over kind of three levels or three floors, all the air goes up there. Like any air in the system is gonna go up there, you know, and we had a lot of rods and whatever. Um, we had one small section of Wonder Floor. But that boiler kept bloody cutting out because any of that air rising, the pressure would drop in the boiler.

So we were constantly up there topping it up, and then, you know, the pump that was built into it burnt out eventually. So like, that was a, a big learning for us. So talk to your plumber about the positioning of your boiler or heat pump or whatever you're putting in, and make sure, you know, if, if any part of it's gravity fed that you know that will work, but also.

You

know, air is gonna rise too. So

like 

make sure that you're not 

Jen: a really good call. 

Kate: way. 

Jen: Yeah, and it's like if, if you're flip flopping, it's always a good idea to invest in this stage. 'cause these are things that if they go wrong, they're so, so, so hard to fix. So just spend the extra to, you know, if you need an extra pump, if you need an extra whatever to spend it, it's worth it like it really 

is. 

I think that's 

Kate: I think [00:25:00] that's more or less, yeah, it's very glamorous topic, but like it's something that just. You need to know and like, knowing the stuff and knowing the questions to ask is the key thing. Like, you're gonna have an engineer and you're gonna have a plumber deciding a lot of this stuff, but just, you know, be wary.

Know where box outs are gonna be. Take pictures of pipe work, floor flooring goes down just so you have an idea and, uh, a harsh lesson I learned recently. Make sure there's no main fed pipes just below the plaster work in your living room.

Jen: Oh God. Oh God, look, that shouldn't happen. 

Kate: that shouldn't happen just to terrify 

Jen: here we are. 

Kate: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, luckily there was two of us in the house when it happened and we drilled into it by accident, but it really shouldn't have been there. Um, but anyway, take more pictures of pipes. You know, it's not the

coolest or sexiest thing to have in your camera roll, but you will be thankful.

Love it

someday.

Jen: Yeah, it's a good, it's a good reminder to just visit the house as often as you can while everything is exposed and rec record, like take pictures and record and just keep an eye on what's 

going on. 

Kate: Yeah, and I think next [00:26:00] time we'll cover the other part of your m and e plan, the electrical side, and all the lighting and Jenny's favorite

topic. 

Jen: favorite topic.

guys. It's so critical. Honest 

Kate: Yeah, Yeah, 

Jen: what are you doing if you're not getting your lighting right? 

That'll be next week.

Kate: Okay. We'll see you then. 

Jen: Bye. 

Kate: Bye.