Free New Construction Plumbing Checklist

Seven that a new-build contractor performs. Drainage and vent by water at a 10-foot head, or by air at 5 psi. The water supply system at working pressure, or by air at 50 psi. The shower liner at 2 inches of water. Gravity sewer at a 10-foot head. Forced sewer at 5 psi above the pump rating. And the final test at a 1-inch water column. All of them are held for 15 minutes. Storm drainage has no independent values — it inherits whichever of the first two you use.

Because the duration is half the requirement and it is the half people skip. The code says "not less than 15 minutes" for most of these tests, and a system that holds 10 psi for four minutes has not passed anything. The builder scores value and duration independently, so a short hold fails on its own terms and says so.

No. IPC 312.3 carries an explicit exception: plastic piping shall not be tested using air. This one surprises people because it is often described as a UPC-only restriction — it is not, both codes prohibit it in near-identical language. The builder prints the prohibition alongside the air test rather than leaving you to remember it.

Whatever your authority says, and you should ask rather than assume. This is the least portable figure on the whole sheet. Of the jurisdictions we surveyed, not one reproduced the model code value — Gallatin, LaGrange and Easley call for 10 psi, and West University Place in Texas calls for 40 psi at top-out. Ten is the de facto street standard, but a checklist that printed it as a national requirement would be wrong in real places, so it is a field you fill in.

The model code does not say. IPC 903.1.1 literally prints a fill-in blank — "not less than [NUMBER] inches above the roof" — and each jurisdiction fills it in. North Carolina uses 6 inches, Connecticut, Ohio, Utah and Denver use 12, New York City uses 24. Record the figure your inspector enforces and the export prints it as the authority’s value, not as ours.

Not under the 2021 IPC. Older editions had a base-of-stack provision at 708.3.4, and it did not survive the renumbering into 708.1.x. If your inspector expects one it will be a local amendment or a UPC habit — worth asking rather than assuming either way.

The test values happen to match — both codes use a 10-foot head, 5 psi, and 15 minutes, and both prohibit air on plastic. But the checklist items are cited to the IPC, and the two codes genuinely diverge elsewhere: trap arm lengths differ at every size, the UPC has no air admittance valve provisions at all, and wet venting is limited to one bathroom group rather than two. Adoption is also messier than most people expect — five states use neither code, Texas adopts both, and four have no statewide plumbing code. Confirm with your AHJ.

No. It is the contractor’s own record of what was installed and tested, and every export says so. IPC 108.2.3 is clear that non-complying work shall not be covered until the code official authorizes it — this checklist helps you get to that point and records when it happened.