Take Photos During Construction To Document Hidden Utilities

Construction Photos – Document Plumbing and Electrical

One of my biggest pieces of advice for anyone building a new home or under going an major renovation is to take as many photos as you can during construction to document hidden utilities. Every house contains hundreds if not thousands of feet of wire, piping and duct work hidden beneath drywall, insulation and framing. It’s extremely useful to have photos available of the exact locations of each of these utilities for future reference.

Document Critical Utilities

I’ve included a couple of photos that I took during the construction of our new home. In the first picture you can see a mess of red, blue and white PEX pipes all running vertically from the basement to the 2nd floor in a 2×4 interior wall. The blue PEX pipes are domestic cold water home runs from the manifold in the utility room up to the two bathrooms on the second floor. The red PEX pipes are domestic hot water home runs serving the same function. There are also two white 1/2″ PEX tubes that deliver and return the hot water for the baseboard heat in the bedrooms.

The nice thing about these photos is if you do have a problem, or you undertake some type of future renovation you can really pin point the locations and also know exactly what is in the wall before you start demolition. For one thing I’d seriously consider whether or not to even hang a picture frame on that wall for fear of puncturing a pipe.

The second photo shows another interior wall more water lines. This wall has cold water, hot water and supply and return piping for the radiant heat in the 2nd floor bathrooms. This photo was important to me when I installed our home office. You can see all the blocking that was installed for the cabinets and my fear was puncturing a pipe during the cabinet installation.

Obviously having this type of information can be quite helpful if you need to locate and repair a leaking water line.

Types of Features To Document

There are lots of features in a new or remodeled home that should be documented for future reference. I recommend documenting the following items.

• Hot and Cold Water Supply Lines
• All plumbing Drain and Vent Lines
• Heating and Air Conditioning Supply Lines
• Duct Work
• Electrical Wires
• Structural Elements Such As Beams, Trusses and Structural Connectors

So next time you build a new home or have a major renovation done make sure you take lots of photos. The photos you take may end up saving you a good deal of money and time when you do your future projects around the house.