The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
New Handy Site On Plumbing
The first thing a plumbing estimator should get into his head is the fact that there is a per cent, of cost known as overhead expense that must be reckoned with on all jobs. This overhead expense is inevitable; no job can be figured or contract taken with safety if the overhead is overlooked or ignored. This theme has been so well covered by the ''Trade Extension Bureau,' a national organization maintained by the National Association of Master Plumbers at Evansville, Indiana, who will be pleased to send their literature covering the subject to any plumbing estimator, that I will not attempt in this article to go further into this veryimportant part of estimating.
As I have previously stated, plumbing cannot be figured by rule; every job is different and requires a separate estimate, though a few suggestions on time saving methods that are in use by some contracting plumbers, might be helpful. Costs cannot be given in this article, owing to the variation of cost of labor and material in different parts of the country.
Let us say you are figuring on a three story apartment building, which with the exception of the fixtures, the location of the water service and sewer stubs are nearly standard and can be divided into the following units, to arrive at the cost of the roughing-in material:—as shown in
Fig. 1.—Bath room stack with supplies.
Fig. 2—Sink and laundry waste stack with supplies.
Fig. 3—Ice box waste stack, and this will apply to any kind of building.
Fig. 1 and 2 consist of all the 4" and 2" soil pipe, soil pipe fittings, branch waste and vent pipes, including supply pipes from basement sewer to roof plate. Eig. 3 consists of waste only.
Figure 1 on adjoining page shows a typical installation of a bath room stack in a three story Chicago apartment house. The soil fittings noted in Fig. 1 are known as Fruin and Walker or F. & vV. fittings, listed and carried in stock by practically every jobber in plumbing supplies in the country. Regular soil pipe fittings can be used for such an installation at a slightly lower cost of material, but a much higher labor cost.
The pipe and fittings shown can be readily figured out by the estimator and cost of same ascertained from your wholesale dealer.
Once the cost of each stack is figured out much time is saved on succeeding jobs by merely checking off the number of stacks, which includes every thing required from roof to basement; then the basement supply pipe, including circulating pipes, the sewer pipe in basement, with floor drains, catch basins, conductor pipes, and connections to stacks.
