Plans and a date
We take off the stub-up locations from the plan set and the fixture schedule, and we book against your pour date rather than a vague week.
727-243-078124/7 EMERGENCY SERVICE
727-243-078124/7 EMERGENCY SERVICE
Below-slab drain, waste and vent piping and water lines, set in the trench and signed off before the pour. For builders, owner-builders and light commercial.
Tell us the lot, the pour date and the plan set.
We come in once the footings are formed and the pad is cut to grade, and we leave when the underground has passed its inspection and the slab is ready to be poured. That means the below-slab drain, waste and vent piping, the water lines in the trench, the cleanouts, the closet bends and stub-ups set to the plan dimensions, the sleeves where pipe comes up through the slab, and the test that the inspector wants to see holding.
We work from the plan set and the fixture schedule, so stub-up locations come off your drawings rather than off a guess. If a dimension on the plan will not build, we would rather raise it before the trench is dug than after the concrete is down.
Top-out and trim-out are not part of this scope. We do not come back for the above-slab piping once the walls are framed, and we do not set fixtures or do the final. If you need a plumber for the whole build from permit to certificate of occupancy, we are not the right fit for the later stages, and it is better to know that now than halfway through.
Being clear about this saves everybody a wasted call. What we are good at is getting a clean, square, inspection-ready underground into the ground on a date that holds.
The Florida Building Code, Building, Section 110.3 lists three plumbing inspections, and the first is the Underground inspection: to be made after trenches or ditches are excavated, piping installed, and before any backfill is put in place. It is not a formality and it is not something that can be caught up later.
Section 110.6 is the sentence that holds up a pour. Work shall not be done beyond the point indicated in each successive inspection without first obtaining the approval of the building official, and any portion that does not comply shall not be covered or concealed until authorised. The residential volume puts it even more bluntly at Section P2503.2: a plumbing or drainage system shall not be covered, concealed or put into use until it has been tested, inspected and approved.
Jurisdictions use their own inspection codes on their permit portals, so the number you book under will differ between Pasco County, New Port Richey and Pinellas. The code-level requirement does not.
This is where rough-ins fail. Section 312.3 of the Plumbing volume says plainly that plastic piping shall not be tested using air, which rules out putting 5 psi on a PVC underground and calling it done.
Section 312.2 sets what is required instead. The drainage system is filled with water, no section tested with less than a 5-foot head, and the pressure held for not less than 15 minutes, with the system tight at all points. For a one or two family dwelling the residential volume governs and Section P2503.5.1 adds a third option, a vacuum test at minus 5 psi held 15 minutes, which is allowed on plastic where an air test is not.
We stand the test up and leave it standing for the inspector rather than testing it, draining it and asking anyone to take our word for it.
Residential Section P2604.4 draws the line: trenching installed parallel to footings and walls shall not extend into the bearing plane, and the bearing plane is a line running down at 45 degrees from the outside bottom edge of the footing. Cut inside that line and you have undermined the thing the house stands on.
The rest of the trench work has its own rules. Section 306.1 requires buried piping to be supported throughout its entire length, Section 306.2.2 requires rock to be taken out to at least three inches below the bottom of the pipe so that no pipe or joint rests on rock, and Section 306.3 requires backfill in 6-inch layers, tamped, brought up evenly on both sides so the pipe stays aligned, until the crown is covered by 12 inches of tamped earth.
Section 603.2 governs this and it catches people out on tight lots. Where the water service runs in the same trench as the building sewer, the sewer has to be built of the materials listed in Table 702.2. If it is not, the two have to be at least 5 feet apart horizontally in undisturbed or compacted earth.
There are two ways round it. A crossing is exempt if the water service is sleeved to at least 5 feet either side of the sewer centreline, and the separation does not apply where the bottom of the water service within 5 feet of the sewer sits at least 12 inches above the top of the building sewer. Section 603.2.1 is absolute: potable water service shall not run in, under or above a septic tank, a drainfield or a seepage pit.
In Florida the plumbing underground and the termite treatment are locked together by sequence, and getting it wrong means retreatment at somebody's cost.
Section 1816.1.1 requires the initial chemical soil treatment inside the foundation perimeter to be done after all excavation, backfilling and compaction is complete, which puts our work ahead of the pest control company, not after it. Section 1816.1.4 then requires that any work done after treatment and before the pour, reinforcing steel included, avoids penetrating or disturbing treated soil, and that the treated soil is protected with a 6 mil vapour retarder against rainfall dilution.
Section 1816.2, repeated word for word at Plumbing Section 305.1.1 and Residential Section P2603.3.1, is specific: protective sleeves around piping penetrating a slab-on-grade floor shall not be of cellulose-containing material; where soil treatment is used the sleeve has a maximum wall thickness of 0.010 inch and is sealed within the slab with a non-corrosive clamping device to close the annular space, and no termiticide is applied inside the sleeve.
Section 1816.1.3 adds that any space boxed out in the slab for a trap or a drain has to be formed with permanently placed plastic or metal forms, precisely so nobody disturbs treated soil later. Plumbing Section 305.3 covers pipe through a foundation wall: a relieving arch, or a built-in sleeve two pipe sizes larger than the pipe.
We take off the stub-up locations from the plan set and the fixture schedule, and we book against your pour date rather than a vague week.
Pipe laid to grade and supported along its length, clear of the footing bearing plane, with sleeves at every slab penetration.
The system goes under water, the inspection is called, and it stays exposed and holding until it is signed off. Then it is yours to pour.
The 8th Edition (2023) of the Florida Building Code is what your permit is being inspected against today. The 9th Edition (2026) takes effect on 31 December 2026, which for anyone pouring around the turn of the year is worth knowing in advance.
The Florida Building Commission publishes its own analysis of what changed. For underground work the list is short, which is the useful part: the trenching, backfill, slab penetration and water test sections are not among the sections it identifies as changing.
Nothing there changes how a slab underground is built. It is worth a conversation if your material schedule was written against the old tables.
Pasco County Building Construction Services processes and issues commercial, residential, multifamily and industrial permits and performs the inspections, with applications going through PascoGateway. New Port Richey and Port Richey each run their own building department inside their city limits, so a lot a few streets apart can sit under a different authority with a different portal and a different inspection code.
Pinellas County Building and Development Review Services covers the unincorporated county and also Belleair Beach, Belleair Shore, Indian Rocks Beach, Kenneth City, Safety Harbor and Oldsmar. Clearwater, Dunedin and Tarpon Springs are not on that list and run their own departments.
CFC1430395 is a Certified Plumbing Contractor certification, which is a state credential rather than a county one. Florida Statutes 489.105(8) defines a certified contractor as one who is allowed to contract in any jurisdiction in the state without being required to fulfil the competency requirements of that jurisdiction, and 489.113(4)(a) limits what a local office may ask for to evidence of a current certificate plus the ordinary local licence and permit fees.
In practice that means we do not have to be re-qualified city by city, and a job in Oldsmar is handled the same way as a job in Hudson.
Florida Statutes 489.105(3)(m) also puts the excavation incidental to the plumbing work inside the plumbing contractor's scope, on private and public property alike.
Only the underground. We install the below-slab drain, waste and vent piping and the water lines in the trench, get the work through its inspection and leave it ready for the pour. Top-out and trim-out are not part of this scope, so if you need a plumber for the full build we are not the right fit for the later stages.
After the footings are formed and the pad is cut to grade, and before the vapour barrier and the termite soil treatment go down. The Florida Building Code requires the initial chemical soil treatment inside the foundation perimeter to be done after all excavation, backfilling and compaction is complete, so our trenching has to be finished and closed before the pest control company treats.
The Florida Building Code, Building calls it the plumbing Underground inspection, and Section 110.3 says it is to be made after trenches or ditches are excavated, piping installed, and before any backfill is put in place. Section 110.6 is what stops the pour: work shall not be covered or concealed until authorised by the building official. Individual counties and cities use their own inspection codes on their portals, so check the number with the jurisdiction holding the permit.
Not if the Plumbing volume governs. Section 312.3 states plainly that plastic piping shall not be tested using air, which rules out an air test on PVC. Section 312.2 sets the water test instead: no section tested with less than a 5-foot head of water, held for not less than 15 minutes. For a one or two family dwelling the Residential volume governs and Section P2503.5.1 allows a vacuum test on plastic as a third option, but still not an air test.
Yes. We work for builders and general contractors on repeat jobs, for owner-builders putting up their own house or an addition, and on light commercial. The scope is the same either way, and so is the inspection.
No. CFC1430395 is a state certification. Florida Statutes 489.105(8) allows a certified contractor to contract in any jurisdiction in the state without meeting that jurisdiction's competency requirements, and 489.113(4)(a) limits what a local office may ask for to showing a current certificate and paying the normal local fees.
Emergency Plumbing & Drain Services is a locally operated plumbing company working across Pasco and Pinellas. New construction rough-in sits alongside the repair and drain work we do every day, which is part of why we care what goes under a slab: we are the ones who get called when it fails.
Florida Plumbing License #CFC1430395
Call with the lot and the date and we will tell you straight away whether we can hold it.
CALL 727-243-07814210 Marine Parkway
New Port Richey, FL 34652