Plumbing, Electrical and HVAC Rough In

Date: September 10 - October 8, 2025

Another factor I can't complain about Austin is that he connected me with Jose the good roofer as well as Nick H., a good (and available) plumber. A nice thing about having a physical building was that I could rely a lot less on the paper plans since we had the reality. To prepare I went around and stuck pieces of paper to the wall for each plumbing fixture. Nick came out to assess the job with his dad Eric who was very interesting to talk to. Eric had a prior carrier as a building inspector in Asheville so was very knowledgeable about everything but had no dog in the fight, so for the first time on this project I had an expert I could bounce random questions off of.  He was very generous with his knowledge and went farther than my questions when he saw something that caught his inspector's eye.

Nick is an organized guy and got me a bid pretty quickly. The price for one bathroom, two utility sinks and the water heater hookup was not that much below what we paid for the rough-in of our house in 2007 which has three baths, a laundry room, two utility sinks, eight floor drains and included the under-slab sewer pipe. I texted him back after waiting a day to say I was suffering from sticker shock. Then he explained that his price was for both rough-in and final installation. That was a relief as it seemed more in line with all the rest of the price increases we've experienced this year. 

Before they got started Cypher checked to see that the trusses were ready:

Nick doing rough-in while Eric waits for instructions:

Rough-in looked done after one day. Image below shows bath/shower mixer in the wall and toilet flange. You can see an unused hole they drilled through the plate behind the toilet flange (they had to install the toilet at 90° from plan because it put the toilet right on top of a truss in the floor). That hole you see in behind the toilet flange was them doing me a solid with their hole-saw expertise so that I could run the radon vent from the root cellar to the roof; it runs in parallel with the white sewer vent pipe you see going up on the right side of the picture:

Bathroom lavatory:

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Upstairs utility sink: 

Here is the shop level wet wall with branches to hot water heater and second utility sink. This picture is taken where the stairs need to go. Since Austin hadn't been able to get those stair stringers right, the stairs weren't there which fortuitously helped make the plumbing work easier. I had also forgotten to tell him that the wall shown below was a "wet wall" and should be built with six-inch wood instead of two by fours. (It was on the plans, but who follows those?) Not that hard to fix but I hadn't got around to it before the plumbing went into it.  Eric let me know that would have to be furred out before the inspector would pass it.

My two foot tall trusses are nice in that they give plenty of room to run the plumbing:

Nick set up the pressure test gauge where the hot water heater will be mounted and it looked good at over 100 PSI. He asked me to check that it was still holding pressure in the morning since overnight cool temps will cause it to drop a bit. 
 

A fairly serious problem surfaced that day. I was assuming the plumbers would cut the vent holes through the roof. (If you don't know it already, every plumbing system needs to be vented so that when you flush water into it the air in the pipe has somewhere to go. Its especially important if you want your toilet to flush! Also that air is pretty fetid as it connects all the way to the septic tank, so you want the vent to be outdoors.) Eric said "When I was a roofer I demanded that I put in the vents since the roofer has the guarantee against leaks." So here I was tripping on my ignorance since if I had included this in my roofing spec I don't think it would have cost me anything.

I called Jose the roofer and tried to explain what I needed. I had a hard time making him understand, so I texted him a picture of the vent on the house as an example. He said he would send out his guy the next afternoon to do it and it would cost $300, but I needed to have all the materials on hand: flange, screws and the good brand of silicon caulking.  Later that evening I drove into the Weaverville Lowes and was able to find the flanges. I had the roof screws (2 sizes!) on hand in the barn left from previous projects. When Jose called the next morning to make sure it was a go I sent him proof of readiness:

 

When the three roofing guys (1 pro, 2 helpers) showed up the next afternoon they thought they were supposed to redo a single vent on the existing house. So my effort to define the job by sending a picture backfired! Maybe they thought that it was going to be simpler, and they definitely only thought it was going to be one.  Back on the phone with Jose, explaining the actual task with a Spanish speaker on hand. Ching-ching! $300 per vent. OK, whatever.

My luck took a turn for the better when we explored where the vent pipes emerged onto the roof. Both the sewer vent and the radon vent fell nicely between the seams of the roof, so I could have them run straight up out of the wall and through the roof. The roofing guys didn't have a hole saw with them to cut the opening though the roof deck - that's not part of standard roofing work I guess. Luckily I just bought a 3" hole saw for some volunteer hurricane recovery work I'd done in Marshall! And I had seen it recently when rummaging through the barn mess, so I knew where to find it! The roofer pro put that saw onto his cordless drill and went at it but it required more torque then his tool could deliver. Luckily I still own my 1978 Makita corded drill (first electric tool I bought) and I knew where to find that too.

 

That side handle helps a lot with high-torque situations.

Not a bad afternoon to be on the roof: 

 

The guys sent a picture of the completed work to Jose who copied me:

For my part I got the stairs installed and got that too-thin wall to six inches by ripping some boards in half and breaking out the old nail gun.

 

Nick came out to check that the system was ready for inspection and asked that I also call the building inspections department because they had only been able to leave a voice mail. I spoke to Greg who put out the vibe that I was really being a pain in the ass since of course you could rely on the voice mail. Maybe he hadn't been pleased with his lunch. I repeated the details that we were requesting a plumbing rough-in inspection for the next day and he said he'd double check it.

In the meantime Nick discovered that the standing water test on the drain lines wasn't holding. He had used a rubber test bulb inserted into the clean-out fitting in the garage, then inflated it to block the line, then filled the whole drain system all the way to the roof with the garden hose. Turns out the rubber test bulb (which was seven years old) had cracked and lost pressure. Not having a spare in his truck, he got Father Eric to drive out with a replacement so just in case the inspector got there first thing the next morning it would be good.

Well the inspector didn't get there first thing Friday morning. Nick came back out to wait for him in person around noon. He was still waiting when we left at three for a celebratory dinner for Charla's big seven-oh.  Never did show, so Nick wasted his afternoon, and they didn't answer the phone. Monday Nick called and the Madison County building inspector said they don't do plumbing rough-in inspections - that they only would do the inspection after all the trades had finished. So after these many years of me bragging on how great the building inspectors are here, they've finally given me something to complain about! First, according to Eric (the former inspector) their policy is against state law which sets out the county requirements. Second, it's not really reasonable to expect a plumbing system to stay ready for inspection perpetually because of the pressure tests that must be demonstrated; the plumber's test equipment can't be moved to the next job if it has to stay at my place while the electrical work is done. Finally, why the hell hadn't Greg told me that they wouldn't come when I spoke to him on the phone? 

The next time I was in Marshall I stopped in to inform them of my displeasure. Greg wasn't there - but his alternate wasn't too put out by me and WRT the second point said I should just take a picture of the test gauge holding pressure which would be good enough for the eventual inspection.

Nick asked me if I had an electric contractor lined up. I had reached out to Heath T for a bid but hadn't heard back. Heath was the guy who did the meter rebase work last January that I described in an earlier post. Nick said that Father Eric had his electrical license and was looking for jobs. So Eric and I set up a time to walk though all the electrical requirements so that he could get me a bid.

Once again Eric showed the depth of his knowledge and experience as we walked through and decided what lights and outlets would be installed. My strategy is to do just the basic stuff at this point and wait until I'm occupying the building to implement a second pass of lights and outlets. I'd like to have that wiring located perfectly for the shop equipment, etc, and  don't know just where everything will be placed. Eric got it, and let me know what the minimums are to meet code.

One of the bigger factors in the cost of the wiring was my decision to install an electric on-demand (tankless) hot-water heater. If you want to have good flow of hot water you need to supply 25-30 Kilowatts of power. That requires three 240V breakers in parallel in your box! And massive conductors to get the power from the box to the heater. Eric said that in his experience everyone who had installed a tankless electric had replaced it with a standard heater within a year or two because of the electric bill. "Don't do it!" was the message. However I am sticking with it. Because as I see it, there are two conflicting requirements. First this hot water will not be used very often. How often am I going to need hot water if I'm working in the woodshop? Second, if we eventually have a guest room upstairs, I want enough hot water to fill the bath tub or take a shower. That means a larger tank. If I had a hot water tank I'd be keeping a mass of water warm year-round for very little average use. So my estimate is the cost and waste will be lower by having a tankless system.

My original plan was to use the tankless Bosch propane water heater that I already own from the stand-alone bathroom I built when we first moved here. However that heater's performance sucks by contemporary standards and requires a huge vent through the roof. Newer propane models with wall vents would be an option but they have the tradeoff of needing to have a propane tank installed, plumbed and kept full and they cost a good bit more than the electric. Only time will tell if I made the right choice!

 After electrical rough-in, here is the 200amp panel with lots of colors:

Above the panel, three thick black wires (size 8-3) head off to the water heater while the single black wire goes "up" to the putative electric car charger (Eric says those wires alone cost about $1000). Orange wire (size 10-2) is for the double mini-split compressor.

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The garage has boxes for three garage door openers. Eric pointed out that since there is no entry door to the garage, I should purchase at least one garage door that can be opened without power so we can get in there if the power goes out.

Wiring for light in root cellar:

The final trade was HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning). I suppose this would normally be done before electrical, which would be important if there were ducting to be installed since routing ducting is less flexible than routing wires. My plan includes mini-splits on each level, which at this point are nominally for de-humidification. I was educated by Vadim, the Ukrainian HVAC guy recommended by Eric, that his scope included the bathroom fan. We ordered the fancy fan unit that includes a heater:

 

To prevent condensation from freezing the exit port shut, the vent pipe exist must be higher than the unit, so my plan to exhaust out the back wall wouldn't work - he routed out the side wall it under the peak: 

 

The upstairs in our house does not have any A/C so I asked him to also bid on installing a dual-head mini-split system so each bedroom can get some cooling for those increasingly frequent summer heat waves. Might as well deal with the residence while we've got the guys out here.

 

Top floor mini-split rough-in. The white PVC pipe on the right is for the condensation drain. Vadim pointed out that code requires at least three feet between the mini-split and the smoke detector, so the placement that Eric had used wouldn't work.

I'm pretty sure putting the pipes though the floor truss is a no-no. I had told Vadim when he was preparing to bid that he should route through the wet wall (2 feet to the right in the picture below). However on the day I wasn't supervising him and didn't see it until it was done. In this case I don't think it will be structurally problematic because the trusses are doubled there. However I was worried that we could fail the rough-in inspection. 

He routed the top floor pipes down to run behind the shop floor mini-split location and out to where the shared compressor will be mounted:

For the garage we'll install a single head unit. I had put a 2" pipe through the ICF for his run low enough to allow the condensation pipe to drain:

The compressor unit will be mounted higher on the outside wall since its plumbing doesn't need to have a slope.

Now that all the trades were done I called the county for the framing + pluming + electrical + HVAC inspection. The inspector did come out this time and was a guy I hadn't met before. He took a bunch of pictures, paying special attention to the stair design (which currently had framing to enclose it only on one side).  No mention of the drilling through the truss or my low upstairs window. I told him I was not planning on insulating the shop and storage area (top floor) at this point ... only the bathroom. I showed him the cold water drain in the root cellar which will allow me to remove all water from the plumbing when it gets below freezing. He said because I was installing mini-splits it would be considered "conditioned space" which meant insulation was required. The only other item was making sure the smoke detector upstairs (which I explained we were going to move away from the mini-split) should include a carbon monoxide sensor.

As I had discussed the insulation with former building inspector Eric, I stuck to my guns that the mini-splits were for dehumidifying only and it wasn't conditioned space. He said he would check out my stair design and insulation question when he got back to the office to review the code text. He said I should send him code sections to back up my position.  I asked what the next required inspection would be if his research found no issues and he said it would be for inspecting the insulation.

Later that day he called to say the stairs were OK if I framed in the other side, and that conditioned spaced definitely had to be insulated. I reached out to Eric for code sections and he sent me something from the licensure exam book about dehumidifying attic and crawl spaces. Although not applicable, at least that text got me the right terminology to start googling the North Carolina code.

What I found was that energy efficiency requirements of the code have exceptions for Residential Garages (bottom floor), Factory Group F (shop floor) and Storage Group S (top floor).  So I printed out excerpts including the definitions of those terms and dropped it off at the Building Inspections office. As I didn't hear anything back I decided to let the sleeping dog lie, go with my plan and deal with it at the insulation inspection.