slap without plumbing placed before pour?

[FrankInWIS]

neighbor of mine at the country place is telling he is going "to take care of me" by doing my fill and slab for me.  Still going to cost, but supposedly will save a lot.  He is a builder, built beutiful place for his mom and the extended family right near me.  
I am concerned though.  He wants to bring his crew in and get it done and out of there fast.  He doesn't want any down time or having the guys make two trips ....by waiting for a plumber (or heavan forbid me!) put in the waste pipes and water supply lines in the critical places by the bath and kitchen.  I be cheating by living in the to-be built garage/loft first, and then finishing the house later.  I may have even wanted to sneak a waste line into the garage for now.
If I don't put the lines in before the pour, how the hell am I going to get the in later?  I imagine he's going to tell me there is some bIG hole saw, and then i have to dig under the slab to find and join the pipe.  Is this do-able, or is he trying to get in and get out but leave me with a large problem.   Hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but maybe I'm going to have to.   Thoughts please?  
Not looking at dpong pier cause of high ground water, and ammount of time/labor needed on my part.

[JRR]

Unless it is a huge floor plan, all baths and kitchen sinks can be located on outside walls ... think wall-supported toilets and tubs on legs.  All the services and drains can come thru the walls with a bit of planning.

[John_C]

IMHO the only sane way to do it is to do the plumbing rough in before you pour.  

Even if all the fixtures were on or near outside walls it would be a major problem to install the closet flanges for the toilets and the traps for tubs.  And I'm not convinced you want a lot of supply lines in the outside walls where freezing is more likely when you're away for a while.  There is likely going to be a some time gaps in the form-fill-inspection-pour timeline.  Do it yourself, work it out with a plumber, pay him a few bucks extra, or find someone else.

[glenn-k]

You can set the stubs about an inch or less below finished floor in a box of sand.  He can pour over the top and you can break it out later and put the flange - etc in and grout around it.

Usually it's not too big a problem to pour around a few pipes that are firmly staked and set in a wall line.  They need a sleeve,  cardboard or insulation around them where they stick through the concrete.

[FrankInWI]

Thanks very much for the very helpful replies.  If this guy wants to do it in a quick way that screws me up long term, maybe he's not such a "good neighbor" and who knows the other ways he might actually screw me in this (I need 30-40 loads of backfill to bring it up to floodplain +2).  
I'm going to put the feelers out to talk to some other local contacts/contractors, and maybe even consider doing this part myself too.  That might be the only thing we get done till winter shuts us down, but I'd save even more $$ that way, and I it won't be long before I can see the bottom of that piggy bank anyway.

[tc-vt]

I built my place on a slab.  I had help from someone who isn't a plumber but has done a bit of everything in construction and was able to get the plumbing roughed in in a few hours.  This was faster than I would have taken with all of the overthinking about pitch and drains and vents.  He made it look easy.  

Just work backwards from the septic tank to each fixture and vent line.

Read the Taunton "Plumbing a House" book by Hemp for under slab rough in.

If you have the money, put radiant tubing in the slab, too.

Tom

[FrankInWI]

That's a great idea.  I love the Tauton books.  I'll get it if it's less than $20 probably and the more I think of it, the more likely I am now to just do the damn thing myself.  ...the whole back fill, and the slab.  we'll be slow....but we'll be cheap, and we'll learn a lot.  

[tc-vt]

http://www.amazon.com/Plumbing-House-Pros-Peter-Hemp/dp/1561583332/ref=sr_1_1/103-7931256-3865427?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186532363&sr=8-1


That's the book on Amazon with used copies as little as $7.

It is an old book from 1994 and doesn't talk about pex plumbing, but when I was looking for books for my project back in 2004, it was the only one I found with decent information on under slab rough-in.

I used to have my pictures on yahoo photos which has since been closed down so I think the thread with my pictures will now have broken links.  I'll work on getting the photos available if you want to see what I did.

Tom

[FrankInWIS]

Please DO put in a link to your pictures. Want to see how you did your rough in.  Thanks

[tc-vt]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tcvermont/

That link will bring you to the flickr page.  The set with most of the foundation pictures is the one titled something like 2004_08_2004_09.  I'll go through the rest and make more of the useful pictures  available for viewing.

The initial excavating was done with a mini excavator using just grade stakes as a rough guide as to where to dig.  I put up batter boards after digging.  I used a water level for digging and the concrete forms.  The picture with tree with the horseshoe and the orange stripe on it was my reference for assessing the grade of the property, mostly for plumbing purposes to see how high the house needed to be in order to make it to the septic tank and leachfield.

I think I used about 6 to 8 loads of fill which were compacted with a small plate compactor.  

The concrete forms went up straight, square and level without too much difficulty using only the water level.

Tom