Water/drainage layout

[Big Neil]

It has sort of occurred whilst playing around with floor plans, that it makes s significant amount of common sense to try and plan a layout so that all the water based services were in a single corner/line of the house, to minimise material cost and of course the likelihood for knock-on issues in the case of a leak. 

[Ed Davies]

… and length of pipes to fill when turning on a hot tap.

[Dudda]

While it's good to keep things like this in mind a floor plan should be designed around natural light, functions, space, flow, views, acoustics, etc. Residential services can be made work to almost any layout.

 

I've seen factories and data centers designed around machinery and service runs. The result was never quality architecture or design.

[Big Neil]

As it goes I started thinking of the (i think) Lloyd's tower in London. Went in the lift there when I was a kid and I seem to recall all the services were run up the outside in an unusual fashion so as to save room on the interior. Obviously there has to be a nod towards acoustics, views etc, but maybe this is something which people should be more inclined to consider. Might actually by the nature of doing it, provide some interesting designs. In cases where houses are of a more normal appearance and design, so brick and block 4 bedder etc, then concessions seem to often be made which restrict quality of design anyway, so might as well have a focus on mechanical practicality.

[Gone West]

We designed our house with all the water supply and waste in one quarter of it. That included a downstairs wet room which in theory should help with any possible flooding as we also had level thresholds for downstairs internal doors.