How to plan for less water leaks in your new home

Recently we published an article on how to avoid many major causes of water damage in your home, and many of these you can incorporate into maintenance of your new home.  But if you have the opportunity to build a home from the ground up or are remodeling a significant portion of it, you can design a home that is less susceptible to water damage.  This translates into a healthier home over your lifetime and less expense and hassle if you don’t have to spend on repairs from water damage!  Designs like these are smart in many ways.  You may have a vision of how your home is laid out, but with small changes at the design level, you can reap benefits throughout the life of your home.

We’ll start with where appliances that use water, and wet areas like showers and sinks, are placed in the home.  If you move all of these into one corner or wall, it does several things: 

• It reduces the length and cost of supply and drain pipe runs 

• By running drains in a shared wall of adjacent rooms, you can reduce the number of vents and roof penetrations (roof penetrations in themselves are “weak spots” in the roof)

• It also limits troubleshooting and damage to that section of the home if a pipe breaks.  

• You’ll get more efficiency from your hot water system with shorter piping runs. Check out this video for many helpful tips on locating these systems!

Next, make sure to use durable piping that is also healthy.   According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), copper pipes with “Lead-free” joint materials (less than 0.20 percent lead) and “lead-free” faucets and fixtures (less than 0.25 percent lead), are the healthiest. However, we know that copper is not as flexible as some plastic, and it’s more expensive to buy and install.  For that reason, the second choice is very good: polypropylene pipe.  Polypropylene pipes are less expensive than copper and are less likely to leach chemicals into water than other types of plastic piping.  These are recommended by EWG over: 

• Cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) pipes: these are tremendously popular today in new homebuilds because they are more flexible and easier than copper to install, resistant to acids, better at resisting freezing damage (Uponor touts the durability of its PEX through more than 400+ freeze/thaw cycles, maintaining flexibility all the way down to -40°F (-40°C), and don't scale or corrode. PEX has been used in Europe since the 1960s, and even “plastic-phobic” California embraced PEX.  However, they are somewhat permeable, so that pesticides, gasoline or other soil contaminants can migrate through the pipe into drinking water. Studies have also shown that PEX piping can leach MTBE, a toxic petroleum byproduct, into drinking water. A 2009 California Building Standards Commission study found that MTBE leaching from PEX pipes declines rapidly over time, but some leaching may still occur.  PEX also has susceptibility in chlorine resistance. “Even short-term exposure to sunlight can dramatically reduce the resistance of PEX to chlorine and result in premature rupture of the pipe,” according to Robert Riversong. “Studies show just a one-week exposure to sunlight may reduce the chlorine resistance lifetime of some PEX pipes by half; with a two week exposure completely depleting PEX of any chlorine resistance.” (How Safe is PEX Tubing?)  Greenbuildingadvisor comments that despite these  problems with PEX, there’s no clear winner between it and copper, and one should consider the specific design where it will be used, for example the ability to bend it in large radius reduces turbulence in high-flow pipes like hot water supply.

• Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) piping can leach out carcinogenic vinyl chloride, especially in pipes made before 1977.

Further to keeping piping out of the sun, keeping it inside the building envelope makes it last way longer as well.  You may choose to have an unconditioned, vented attic or crawlspace in your new home (although we would advise against these), but just like avoiding putting your air handler in these spaces, you’ll want to avoid putting your water system in there, too!  Then, you won’t have to worry about freezing or animal damage to your pipes, just frozen and animal-damaged plants.  Yes–rats can actually gnaw through insulation and into PEX piping in attics and crawlspaces, putting you at risk for a major water catastrophe!  (Are Rodents Really Chewing Through PEX?

It’s important to keep things accessible.  Even if you don’t have a dedicated mechanical room for your air handler and water heater, make sure to leave room for maintenance and replacement of these items, and important pipe runs, in the future!  (I’m looking at my “low-boy” water heater right now under my stairwell and wondering how I’m going to change the anode rod in a year or two!)   Having removable wall or ceiling panels makes it easier to locate leaks and do replacement or maintenance. 

Potential wet areas, such as the laundry room and bathroom, can be planned to drain well in an emergency.  A second-floor laundry room is super-convenient UNTIL the washing machine springs a leak, then the whole area below that room could be in trouble!  Here’s where having the entire floor of that upper laundry room sloped, sealed and drained could pay off in the long run.  That way, you only have to repair the washing machine and not 2 floors of your home.  The same can be done with the wet areas of your bathroom and HVAC mechanical room (where the air handler and water heater is located), and you can place drain pans under small appliances like dehumidifiers.  

Finally, adding automatic water shut-off valves or flow sensors to your water supply system can really save you in case of a leak, especially if you’re away from your home a lot (even if you just go to work every day–think about what damage 8-10 hours of running water can do!).  If you decide not to use wifi or bluetooth in your new home, you can certainly choose old-school water leak detectors that simply operate on replaceable batteries, no wifi needed!

Dale Carnegie said it well: “An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.”   Or re-doing, in the case of water damage.  We’ll take the planning, thank you!

Photo by Sven Mieke on Unsplash