Recently the well pressure tank in our home sprung a leak in the crawl space (For those who have wells, the water feeds into the well pressure tank, which creates the water pressure). Fortunately, the plumber charged a flat rate, because it’s not easy to maneuver in such tight quarters, and he could have easily charged extra for the labor.

Planning ahead and designing a plumbing layout that allows for easy servicing and minimizing the length of water pipes will save you money. The closer you are to your water heater, the less time it takes for the water to heat up. And if the distance to all of your faucets is minimized, you may need only one large water heater.

It certainly is not one of the most exciting subjects to discuss, but when building new, plumbing is important to consider when designing a facility from the ground up. In short, one way to keep costs down is to locate rooms that require plumbing adjacent to one another, which are primarily restrooms and the kitchen. Locating the water heater in a storage room, also adjacent to the others, eliminates the need for more than one water heater and speeds up the time for the cold water to turn hot, again saving money. Additionally, using natural gas tankless water heaters can cut the cost of hot water significantly. It makes perfectly good sense: If you don’t need to keep a tank of water heated, it will only lower your costs. Tankless water heaters are competitively priced and only heat the water as needed.

If your desire is to go green, solar panels are an excellent choice. They do not require infrastructure, such as windmills, which, among other things, require cables to be run out to their location. And government programs can make them competitively priced. We estimated the cost of installing solar panels on our home, and the cost was actually less than what we are paying for electricity at the time. With the cost of utilities skyrocketing, solar panels becoming more and more affordable. And some of the newer panels are warranted for twenty-five years.

Along with building structure, and heating and cooling best practices, efficient plumbing is one more way to minimize your cost. Taken together, they all add up to large savings over what you might have otherwise paid. That’s money you can use on staffing and programming.

In service to Christ,

Mark Eastway