M&E

[Bitpipe]

Lots of good advice above.

 

Depending on your construction type and how easily it can be modified during 1F, you may need to make structural allowance for the bulky services such as foul drainage, gas flue, electricity & water supply  and MVHR (externals are the bulkiest but the internal runs need space also). 

 

Steels are the one element you don't want to be modifying on site  - penetrations need to be designed in and SE signed off.

 

Most of the other 1F services (gas, electrics etc) can be run / penetrated where required in the usual service void. 

 

Our sparky took the floor plans and marked out socket, data, tv, lights & switch locations (internal and external) to enable him to cost up the job and plan distribution etc.

 

When the frame was up we made final decisions on locations with pens and gaffer tape, still left a lot of decisions to his discretion.

 

Plumbing was a case of deciding what went where in bathrooms and then working backwards for fouls and supply. Nothing beats doing lifesize cutouts of baths, loos, showers etc and positioning them on the floor once the room is framed out - we made quite a few tweaks.

 

MVHR goes where it can - most vendors will do you a design for pricing purposes and will supply excess duct to allow for tweaks.

 

You can pay for a plan in advance but I guarantee that there will be significant deviations so would question the value.

 

Best advice is to get sparky and plumber onsite (after you've nabbed all the space for MVHR) and get them to agree how they'll work together. Then leave them to it. Should all be included in the price TBH.

[Dyfed]

@ragg987 deffinetley agree with your post, as a Plumbing & Heating Engineer myself and now a lecturer you deffinetley need to know the outcomes before designing any system.

 

For instance any concealed appliances/fittings need to be installed at 1st fix stage, I.e Showers, toilets, things like wall hung basins need to be considered especially on stud walls for fixings purposes.

 

once a tradesman such as a plumber knows of his clients desired outcome then he or she can design the system accordingly, such as required pipe sizes to archive flow rates, boiler output to meet the overall demand and hot water cylinder to meet the number of outlets/occupancy level.