Can I move the toilet to the other side of the room?

Usually, but the answer depends on what is under the floor. On a timber subfloor there is room to re-route the pan connection and keep proper fall. On a slab it means cutting concrete to reach the drain, which is doable but changes the budget. Either way we check the distance and fall back to the stack before you commit to the layout.

Should I buy the tapware or will you supply it?

Either works. If you buy it, order early and send us the spec sheets before rough-in, because set-out depends on the actual model. If we supply it, you get trade pricing and one point of contact for a warranty claim. Whichever way, check the WELS rating and avoid anything you cannot get a cartridge for in five years.

How long will the bathroom be out of action?

Two to four weeks for a typical inner-north bathroom, of which our plumbing is about two days. The waiting is tiling, waterproofing cure times and trade sequencing. We schedule rough-in and fit-off around the tiler so the room is not sitting idle waiting on us, and we tell you at quote which weeks you will be without it.

Bathroom renovations and rough-in

What does bathroom renovations and rough-in involve?

We do the plumbing half of a bathroom renovation in two stages: rough-in, where hot, cold and waste are set out and pressure tested before the walls close, and fit-off, where tapware, toilet and shower go on after tiling. The set-out stage is what decides whether the finished room works.

At a glance

Scope: Strip-out, rough-in, pressure test and fit-off for bathrooms, ensuites and laundries
Time on site: Roughly a day for rough-in and a day for fit-off, a few weeks apart
Pressure test: Rough-in left under test pressure until the sheeting goes on
Pressure limiting valve: Fitted so every fixture stays at or below 500 kPa
Quoting: Fixed price from your plan and fixture schedule after a site visit

Rough-in is where a bathroom is won or lost

Before a sheet of plasterboard goes on, every outlet has to be in its final position: the mixer at the right height for the basin that was actually ordered, the shower rail and rose set off the tiled finish rather than the framing, the cistern connection on the side that model takes it from, and the pan connection at the exact set-out of the pan chosen. Changing any of it after tiling means cutting tiles. So we ask for the real fixture schedule, model numbers rather than "a wall-hung basin", and set out to that.

Falls and wastes are the other half of it. A shower floor needs consistent fall to the waste with no flat spot for water to sit in, which makes waste position, screed depth and the door threshold something to agree with the tiler rather than assume. A hobless shower needs the floor recessed at framing stage, and that is a carpenter conversation that has to happen before the plumber arrives. Every tiled wet area needs a puddle flange bonded into the waterproof membrane at each floor waste, which is the detail that stops water tracking under the screed and appearing in the next room six months later.

Working with the waterproofer and the tiler

The order that works is strip-out, rough-in and pressure test, frame and sheet, waterproof, tile, fit-off. We test the pipework before it is covered and leave it under pressure, so anything disturbed during framing shows up then rather than behind finished tiles. Waterproofing is signed off to AS 3740 by whoever applies it, and our part is making sure wastes and flanges are ready for the membrane instead of holding it up for a day.

Fit-off, and the details that protect the room

At fit-off we set the mixers, hang the pan, connect the shower and vanity, and commission the lot under pressure. Two things we insist on. A pressure limiting valve, so fixtures see no more than 500 kPa: most tapware warranties are void above that, and high static pressure is what shreds cartridges. And genuine access to an in-wall cistern, either through a removable flush plate or a panel, because a concealed cistern with no way in is a future wall demolition. If the new layout moves a toilet more than a metre or so, we check the existing stack and available fall first, since a pan that has to drain uphill is not a problem you can tile over.