Basics of Your Home Plumbing

Before you start doing plumbing projects in your home, you should have the fundamentals down. Even if you don’t do the work yourself, it is important to know what the plumber is talking about.

Every homeowner should know about

• How water comes into their home and how to shut it off
• What a stack is
• How water flows into the stack

The video below is less than 3 minutes and gives you a non-complicated overview of these concepts.

How Does Water Get Into the Home?

Unless you’re on a well, a water purveyor provides potable water via a connection to your home. This travels through a meter past your shutoff valve. If you look at the sidewalk in front of your house, you’ll probably see a box like the one below.

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]

Water Shutoff Box In Sidewalk

From there, the pressurized cold water, which should be between 40 and 60 psi, travels into your house and is distributed throughout.

What is the Stack?

The stack is the drain waste vent system that removes waste water and gray water from your house and vents the toxic gases that are produced by the waste. You saw in the video how pipes from your sinks and toilets connect to your stack. These pipes are sloped so gravity moves the waste water into the stack. More detail about how venting plays a role in the stack will be covered in a different post.

If you found this helpful, please share it and subscribe to our mailing list above.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]