How Plumbing in a House Works
Plumbing in a House Works
A house’s plumbing system is made up of two subsystems that carry freshwater into your home and drain wastewater away from your home. Knowing how these systems work can help you keep your home running smoothly and can also save you money on repairs in the future.
When you turn on the faucet in your kitchen, you’re using water from the main water supply line. This line enters your home through a buried pipe and flows throughout your house and out to your water heater. This is a crucial part of your plumbing system and must constantly work properly.
Water supply lines can come in different sizes and materials, so it’s important to have the correct one for your needs. If you’re unsure, you can look up the size of your pipes online, or speak to a professional. When water flows down a sink, tub or toilet, gravity transports it into the fixture drainpipe that connects to your home’s drainage system. These pipes usually have curved sections called traps that prevent waste gases from traveling back up the pipe and into your home.
How Plumbing in a House Works
These traps can get clogged by debris or by critters that make nests in the pipes, which can lead to serious plumbing problems. To keep the traps from clogging, these traps and pipes are vented so that air can flow into the drains. Traps and vents are an essential part of any plumbing system, as they’re designed to ensure that sewer gases don’t mix into the water in your pipes. This can create a toxic odor and potentially damage your plumbing system.
The drain and vent pipes for your sink, shower and toilet are located underneath your home and are usually concealed behind the walls or beneath cabinets. They’re connected to your main stack, a large vertical pipe that runs from above your roof down to the main sewer line, shown in the Drain water vent plumbing plan.
Once the water reaches the main stack, it’s transported to your home’s sanitary sewer. Sanitary sewers are underground pipes that take the waste water from your home and dispose of it in a sewage treatment plant. You’ll be able to tell the difference between your sink, shower and toilet drain pipes by their shape and their size. The pipes are often labeled with a “nominal” size that is larger than their actual diameter, which is why the fittings for them should be sized accordingly.
This is an essential part of any plumbing system, as it can save you money on repairs in the future if your waste water doesn’t clog up your plumbing pipes. It’s best to always install a waste-water trap, especially in areas that are heavily used, such as your kitchen or bathrooms.
If you notice that your waste water isn’t going down your drains, you may need to replace the vent and trap pipes or upgrade them with new ones that can hold more air. In addition, you should always ensure that your drain pipes are sloped to prevent water from settling in them.