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Fully licensed · Fully insured · WSIB covered

Drip Doctor Plumbing Solutions Ltd

Installation & New Work

New Construction Plumbing

Rough-in through final connection on new residential and commercial builds, coordinated with the rest of the site so the inspection dates you booked are the ones you keep.

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Underground rough-in comes first

The first plumbing on a new build goes in before there is a building. Sanitary and storm leaders, the water service entry, the sump pit, and an ejector pit if the drawings call for one, all set in trench and bedded before the slab is poured. Residential underground is usually ABS DWV, solvent welded and supported, graded at the 1/4 inch per foot the Ontario Building Code asks for on 3 inch and smaller lines and 1/8 inch per foot on 4 inch mains.

This stage carries more weight than any other because concrete does not negotiate. A closet bend stubbed four inches off the finished wall line is a pencil mark on paper and a jackhammer in real life. We work from the architectural set rather than the marketing floorplan, and we check every fixture location against framing dimensions before it gets buried. On a tight infill lot in the older parts of the city the drawings and the site disagree more often than not. Better to sort that out while it is still a phone call.

Underground gets inspected before it is covered. We stage the work so the inspector sees open trench with the test in place, which means the schedule needs a day of slack in it rather than a same-day booking and a hopeful attitude.

Above-ground rough-in and top-out

Once the structure is framed, the roof is on and the site is dry, we run stacks, branch drains, vents and the water distribution. Supply is Type L copper or PEX-A depending on what the spec calls for, run either as a manifold with home runs to each fixture or as a conventional trunk and branch. Both work. Copper costs more in labour and material, PEX-A gives you fewer joints in inaccessible spots, and on most residential jobs the deciding factor is what the builder has standardized on.

Drilling and notching is where a plumber can quietly wreck a floor system, so we stay inside the boring limits for the joist depth and plate every penetration that sits within striking distance of a drywall screw. Supply lines never get run on the cold side of exterior wall insulation. That sounds obvious until you look at what gets found behind the drywall in a January callback on a house built in a hurry.

The DWV side is where layout gets decided for good. Trap arm lengths, wet vent arrangements, fixture unit loading on the stack and vent sizing all come out of Part 7, and they constrain fixture positions more than most people expect. When rough-in is complete, the DWV is filled and held for the inspector and the water lines are pressure tested and left standing.

Trim-out and final connection

Trim happens after tile, paint, flooring and cabinetry. Toilets set and shimmed, tub and shower trim, faucets, sink drains, laundry connections, hose bibbs, and the water heater set and piped. It is the fastest stage and the one most likely to expose a mistake made months earlier.

The usual culprit is wall thickness. A pressure-balance valve is set at rough-in to a specific depth behind the finished surface, and if the tile assembly ends up thicker than what was on the drawing, the trim will not seat properly against the wall. We confirm the finished wall build-up with whoever is setting the tile before the valve is fastened, and we would rather ask twice than open a finished shower wall.

Final inspection follows the fixture set. Anything the inspector flags gets corrected and re-presented, and we handle that directly rather than passing it back to the builder as a list.

What we need from a builder to hold a schedule

Plumbing is one trade inside a sequence, and most of the delays that get blamed on plumbing start somewhere else. If framing runs a week late, rough-in runs a week late. If the HVAC contractor puts a trunk line through the chase where a 3 inch stack was going, somebody is paying for a change and it will not be free for anyone.

None of that is unusual on a build. It just goes better when the coordination happens early.

  • Drawings that match what is actually being built on site
  • Fixture selections locked before rough-in, with spec sheets rather than model photos
  • Framing complete, inspected and dry before we start above-ground work
  • HVAC, electrical and structural routing coordinated before anyone drills
  • Site access, hydro and a dry place to stage material
  • Inspection dates booked with a day of slack on either side
  • One person on the build who can make a decision when something has to change

Questions

New Construction, answered.

When should a plumber be brought into a new construction project?

At the drawing stage, before the excavator books. Fixture positions, stack locations and the invert of the building drain all interact, and a layout that looks fine on an elevation can fail on slope or venting. A short review before the slab is poured costs nothing compared to relocating a drain through finished concrete.

Do I need a plumbing permit for new construction in Toronto?

Yes. New buildings and new plumbing systems require a plumbing permit, and the work is inspected in stages, typically underground before backfill, rough-in before the walls are closed, and final after fixtures are set. The inspector needs the work uncovered and under test at each stage, which is why the sequence has to be planned rather than improvised.

How long does plumbing rough-in take on a new house?

Underground is often one to three days depending on the trench work and the fixture count. Above-ground rough-in on a typical single-family house runs several days to a couple of weeks. Trim is the shortest stage. What actually drives the timeline is fixture count, site access and how ready the other trades are, not the plumbing itself.

Copper or PEX for a new house?

Both are acceptable and both last when installed properly. Type L copper is rigid, tolerates high temperatures and is easy to modify later. PEX-A is faster to run, has fewer joints inside walls and handles freezing better. We install either. If the builder has no preference, we will explain the trade-offs for that specific layout rather than push one product.

Can the bathroom layout change after the slab is poured?

Water lines can move fairly easily. Drains are another matter, because a relocated drain still has to hold its slope and stay within trap arm limits, and below-slab that means saw cutting, jackhammering, re-piping, backfilling and patching. It is doable, and it is one of the more expensive changes on a build. Lock fixture positions before the pour.

Do you work directly for builders and general contractors?

Yes. A good portion of our work is subcontracted through builders, general contractors and developers on both residential and commercial projects. We carry a City of Toronto plumbing contractor licence, general liability insurance and WSIB coverage, and we can provide certificates for your project file before we mobilize.

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