Commercial New Construction Plumbing

Restaurants and bars, retail, offices, salons, small medical and dental suites, warehouse and self-storage restrooms, and multi-tenant shell buildings are all in range. The plumbing scope on those buildings usually covers the water service and meter, a backflow assembly at the service, the sanitary and vent system, water heating or a booster, floor drains, and the fixtures.

Project size and schedule are confirmed before a bid goes out. High-rise work, hospital and lab systems, and jobs needing a larger full-time crew than we can staff get turned down up front rather than accepted and then delayed.

A landlord usually delivers a shell with a capped water stub, a sanitary stub-up, and not much else. The first useful step on a build-out is checking that what the landlord left matches what the tenant's plan needs, because a small waste stub at the back wall will not serve a kitchen at the front of the space, and a meter sized for retail will not carry a restaurant.

When the tenant space sits inside a building that is already occupied, water shutdowns, core drilling, and saw cutting get scheduled with the property manager and announced to the other tenants. Work that makes noise or takes water away from a neighbor happens in a window they agreed to.

Fixtures and equipment follow the approved submittals, and a substitution is raised with the general contractor before it is installed. Drawings that conflict with field conditions go back to the general contractor as a question instead of getting resolved quietly above a ceiling.

Coordination is the other half of it. Sanitary lines, duct, sprinkler mains, and electrical all want the same few inches above the ceiling grid, so sleeves, hangers, and routing get settled at the coordination meeting rather than at the wall.

Drain, waste, and vent piping and the domestic water piping are tested before anything covers them, and on a commercial job the general contractor and sometimes the engineer of record want to see the same test. The local building department sets the test method and how long it has to hold, so each inspection is booked with the authority for that address.

Inspections follow the phases: underground before the slab is poured, rough-in or top-out before the ceiling grid and drywall close it in, and trim-out once the fixtures are set. The backflow assembly at the water service is tested and documented separately, and the grease interceptor is checked against the approved drawings. A restaurant also needs the state plan review (Florida DBPR, Division of Hotels and Restaurants), which is its own approval, separate from the building inspection.

A commercial kitchen is where most of the plumbing budget goes. The grease interceptor is sized and located to the plans, the three-compartment sink, prep sinks, dish machine, and mop basin land on the grease or the sanitary side according to the drawings, and ice machines and prep sinks discharge through an air gap into a floor sink instead of a hard connection.

Hot water is the item that gets underestimated. A dish machine and a three-compartment sink together will empty a small water heater, so capacity and recovery rate are checked against the equipment schedule before the unit is ordered. Where gas piping to kitchen equipment is in the plumbing scope, it is sized for the connected load on that schedule and tested before the appliances are hooked up.