APRIL 2024

Mechanical Spaces: Why They Are So Important In the Build of a New Home

When we design and build a luxury home for our customers, we are always looking for ways to elevate our custom planning and construction. This includes an often overlooked space that is vital to the home’s overall maintenance—the mechanical room.

As you may know, a mechanical room is where the home’s systems, such as HVAC, electrical, water, and plumbing, live and are maintained. At Wellen Construction, we believe extra steps are necessary to organize and document the mechanical systems, especially with larger-scale homes with complex systems and designs.

According to Wellen Construction owner Charlie Gadbois, if you want to know if an expert builder built a home, “Go look in the places that they think nobody else is looking. That will tell you all you need to know.”

When considering home maintenance, the mechanical room’s goal should be to easily troubleshoot and sustain your home’s systems. Some strategies and methods that we use to design and build a well-organized and functional mechanical room include:

Labeling
A properly organized mechanical space begins with labeling and color-coding. Labeling ensures that every item in the room is easily identifiable for anyone needing to work in the space.
Wrapped Piping
Covered and wrapped insulation on piping will cut down on heating the room and provide a nice, clean look.
Documentation
Keeping records of service and owners’ manuals for all equipment, such as your boiler, enables ease of repair and maintenance work in the future.
Safety Caps
Capping your hot water lines with safety taps helps prevent accidents or injuries from scalding water.
Efficiency
A mechanical room protected from humidity and extreme cold or hot temperatures is not only more efficient but will also help cut down on overall utility costs in the long term.
Size
A mechanical space should be built large enough for easy maneuverability, enabling comfortable performance of both everyday tasks and more extensive repairs.

“We bring people into our mechanical spaces, and they seem to be surprised at the level we take them – which is surprising to me because when you walk through our houses, you see the level we take them – it only seems natural to bring a mechanical space to the exact same height.” – Charlie Gadbois

In case you missed it, check out Charlie’s tour of one of our recently constructed mechanical spaces.

Let’s keep building!

The Wellen Construction Team