I have a client, in a condo, who wants to install a shower in a half bath. (Where DO all these people find me lately?). The drain, which serves the 2 units above them, and one unit below them for their half baths as well, is a 2″ wet vent. Each unit has (in the half bath) a toilet, sink and washing machine. I have the 2003 IRC, which if I am reading it correctly puts the kabosh on this because:
A) It’s already grossly undersized (ya gotta hear the drain sounds coming from the traps already).
B) Code doesn’t allow a shower to be discharged into a wet vent at all.
Am I correct on these points?
Thanks in advance…
PaulB
Replies
Who the hell hooked that up?. The toilets are hooked up to a 2 inch line? Questions A+B are correct, you can't make a connection like this. What I would do is get the hell out of Dodge. Sorry my man, but you have major voodo on your hands!. May the force be with you.
I see nobody who knows anything has seen this yet, so here's a little bump...
For clarification... there are already 2 half baths above and the only drain is 2"?There's gotta be a 3" pipe in there somewhere if there are toilets, or at least I'd hope so.
As far as (a) goes, you need to know what fixtures are upstream and use the unit tables to figure out your required vent and drain sizes.
I'm not so sure about your point (b). If the shower is the top fixture on the stack, whatever's downstream is what's wet vented. In some jurisdictions some fixtures can be wet vented, such as the toilet. So technically a shower upstream on a toilet vent might be OK.
I'm sorry...it's been a longgggggggggggg day. The toilet, while in the half bath, is not on that drain stack.
The drain stack in question serves a sink and washing machine. What I read in the code, David, is : "A combination waste and vent system shall not serve fixtures other than floor drains, standpipes, sinks, lavatories, and drinking fountains" (P3111.1)
As to the load, P3111.3 says at 2 inches, under the best of circumstances it can handle 4 fixture units. But I just want to make sure I'm interpreting this all correctly.
Most showers have floor drains, right?
Go for it, how big can a shower in a half bath be?
Joe H
Oh those dang "I" codes why can't everyone go by the UPC----make my life easier.
anyway let's see if I can help with this or not.
2" vent will handle 24 fu's
a combination waste & vent is not a wet vent
a wet vent is a vertical vent that receives the waste from another fixture---limited to 1 & 2 fu fixtures on the same floor not exceeding 4 fu's in total. & it has to be 1 pipe size bigger than the minimum pipe for the upper fixture drain.
a combination waste & vent is quite different usually consists of multiple floor drains using a common vent at the upper most connection pipe sizes really increase with this one rarely see it used in residential applications.
Anyway possible to connect the shower to the toilet stack or on the lower floor below the wet vented section?
Hey Bill...
Thanks for the ummmmm clarification ;) I'll try to decipher it to understand. In this case, there really isn't a practical alternative to tying into the 2" combo drain/vent. I guess I'm still unclear as to whether this would be a code no no...
Thanks for the input!
PaulB