How does plumbing work in a skyscraper

The Burj Khalifa, in addition to being the tallest building in the world, holds six other World Records. Your web browser Internet Explorer 11 is out of date.

Update your browser for more security, speed, and the best site experience. Learn how to update your browser. All of these modifications were required to be completed before the first floor slab was poured. Even after the underground adventures were covered, the building continued to present creative opportunities to the design team.

The slab spacing was determined to copy those in the existing hospital, which were very short intervals. This led to an approach that is commonly used for hotel-type construction, using multiple vertical risers placed in the toilet chases to serve multiple floors. Of course, this approach was required to be modified because of the irregular stacking of like fixture groups from floor to floor and the relatively large floor plates varying between 22, and 24, square feet per floor.

Additional complexity was provided by the modern HVAC requirements for medical facilities and the impact of ceiling plenums, high-density communication and data systems, and high ceiling elevations for more spacious aesthetics on typical patient care floors. Interspersed throughout the building were specialty areas, such as isolation rooms, patient preparation and patient step-down recovery, and ADA-accessible patient rooms. Each of these areas required a unique solution or a variant of those heretofore unique solutions.

The ultimate solution for the project was a combined system using large, centrally spaced main waste and main vent stacks that allowed each smaller fixture riser to extend to the main stacks individually or as a building drain. The riser diagram that resulted has a distinctive fan- or brush-shaped outline where all piping funnels together into the main stack.

In the final configuration, this building ended with three main soil, waste, and vent stacks, two main rainwater stacks, one main water supply riser, and one main medical gas riser. As this discussion illustrates, modern high-rise design is often a series of design concepts that must be tested through analysis and coordination, and then adjusted during the coordination period to maximize flexibility and constructability. This exercise is critical for all building trades but especially so for plumbing systems, for which piping must be accurately placed or accounted for in the early construction phases, while the fixture mounting and finishing connections are made much later after the piping systems are concealed.

It also highlights the need for designers and engineers to have a familiarity with the work of their peers in other trades. This allows for a certain amount of anticipation between trades, which should be beneficial to the overall project. In summary, I have quickly reviewed the process of high-rise plumbing design, particularly focusing on pressure control and on the impact of piping systems on the general construction of the building.

You can see that although many solutions are routine and similar in application, each approach has trade-offs that must be identified, evaluated, and committed to on each unique project. This understanding supports the notion that good engineering is thoughtful and proactive and that good engineers are open to frank discussion and understanding pertaining to their own trade work, as well as that of other trades that are involved in the building.

All high-rise buildings, in design and construction, are significant undertakings for everyone involved. All buildings are unique in form and specific design solutions. It takes a collaborative effort and a determined outlook to achieve success in high-rise design and construction.

Good high-rise plumbing design makes even the tallest of structures more comfortable and safer for all building occupants, and good engineering and design practices and experiences turn the most daunting high-rise design into a matter of scale.

Author: Dennis M. Connelly, CPD. As a Master Control Tech in a MW power plant I had a lot of exposure to flow and pressure drop but your writing on design of a high rise just blows my mind. I am retired now but your explanation should be part of the Master school that I attended. Fowl sewer gas smell has come and gone several times over the years. Hoping to learn possible sources and one will lead to eliminate cause of stinky vent gas invading our bathroom.

Jim; Thanks for the question. If you are on the 15th floor of a 26 floor condo, then you are in the level that should have a soil stack offset and relief vent. This is a device to help control stack loading in tall buildings, and requires venting above and below the offset. I mention this because, it is an unusual arrangement of piping, and if someone was not familiar with what it does, could easily be confused and connect pipes incorrectly.

I could see this happening if a neighbor had their condo renovated and plumbing updated or changed. I could see this this happening here. I believe you have an open vent somewhere nearby. Do you notice gurgling in the toilet or the water level in the bowl fluctuating wildly?

That would indicate a problem with relief vent from the soil stack offset. This is a venting issue. I would look to a commercial or industrial plumbing company to investigate; most one-truck shops are not familiar with the high-rise venting conditions.

I hope this helps. Thanks for looking at my article. Great information. I have a problem. We live in the third floor of a storied building. A few days ago we noticed a sewage back flow from one of the toilet commodes.

Just willing to know what could have been done to control this situation properly? My uncle is wanting to get new pipe fittings for his building for a better plumbing system. He should find the right pipes that could hold up to wear and tear. Hi Dennis, great article thank you. I am the plumber for a 25 storey building which is fairly recently built. The problem we have is the ground floor gents toilet often has soap foam pushing up on one particular toilet that is closest to the stack.

The ground floor toilets do not have sewer smells emanating from the sewer system. Any help would be highly appreciated, thanks. How can thermostatic mixing valve faucets in one unit of a high rise building affect the water temperature of other units of the building? I have a thermostatic mixing valve faucet in my shower for four years and now they tell me it affects the water temperature in other units of the building.

The model plumbing codes are mostly silent with the exception of a few things, like minimum and maximum pressures and waste and vent stack sizing. The code is a minimum, so it does not address many of the issues that make good engineering sense for an energy efficient or sustainable plumbing system. One of the most common problems I find in high-rise building plumbing systems is pressure zone problems.

Problems occur when the plumbing designer or design-build contractor fails to pay attention to the minimum requirements for pressure and maximum requirements for pressure in a plumbing system. The code is a minimum document and most high-rise buildings are built by developers who want to build a building for the cheapest first cost without any concern for energy or maintenance costs.

A developer wants to build it as cheap as possible, get it certified as being green, and sell it to someone else who will have to deal with the energy and maintenance costs over the life of the building. Often, these developer-built, high-rise buildings use four times as much energy as buildings with properly engineered domestic water booster pump systems. A typical developer-built, high-rise building will have a single or duplex booster pump in the basement.

The pump serves the entire building with pressure reducing valves on all of the lower floors where the supply pressure will exceed 80 psi. This type of system design with a single booster pump package and pressure reducing valves is a very energy and maintenance inefficient plumbing system. But, many owners are stuck with this design if they buy a building with this design concept.

On the top 10 floors, there are no pressure reducing valves. This design will waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy over the life of the building. I have always said, if you have pressure reducing valves in your design, it is not a very green plumbing system design. I would like the green certification programs to be revised to never award certifications to a building utilizing PRVs because of their massive energy waste.

They should actually take points away for every floor operated downstream of a PRV in a high-rise water distribution system. There are some exceptions for Pressure reducing valves to reduce normal water pressures down to lower pressures for make-up water to hydronic systems, final rinse water in dishwashers, etc.

There are different quality levels of valves and pumps, and, often in the developer-built buildings, the valves and pumps may be of the lower quality, less expensive types that tend to fail more often.

The pumps in this type of design tend to have seal failures and leaks; the lower quality pressure reducing valves typically experience wear on the seats, especially as the pressure differential grows. Even high quality pressure reducing valves will experience problems with significant pressure differentials across the valve seat. The pressure differentials can be addressed by reducing the pressure in stages, which the developers typically do not want to spend the money on.

When the pressure reducing valve wears out, this is often referred to as wire drawing. This causes more money to be spent purchasing replacement parts and more money to be spent on labor to replace the pumps and pressure reducing valves. Wire drawing of valves occurs when high velocity water shoots across the seat of a control valve and any sediment or scale in the water can score the less expensive softer valve seats. After a short period of time, it looks like someone took a hack saw, or wire saw, and cut a groove in the valve seat.

As the valve continues to wear, it loses its ability to maintain downstream pressure, and, during periods of non-use, the downstream pressure can reach the same pressure as the upstream pressure. This can lead to exploding toilets, bursting pipes, flooding, leaking faucets and toilets, which is a significant waste of water when the supply pressure goes from 60 pounds per square inch to, say, pounds per square inch.

Pipe pressure ratings There are different categories of high-rise buildings as far as design of the water system is concerned. The taller the building is, the higher the pressure rating will be required for the pipe, valves and fittings. Each pipe material has different pressure classifications. It is important to make sure you are using the correct pressure classification for a high-rise building.

Often, in these developer built buildings the water riser is rated at a higher pressure, and all piping downstream of the pressure reducing valve is rated at the lower pressure rating. Air is a large factor for water vertically traveling down a pipe. If pipes are used in a low-pressure zone, air ventilation needs to be controlled. Can you imagine not having hot water? It wouldn't be fun or even sanitary for dishes etc.

During the construction of high-rise buildings, water temperature is often one of the main plumbing challenges. When planning construction of a high-rise building, there are a few elements engineers have to consider, including:.