Bathroom designs often focus on cramming all the fittings in, and they don’t pay much attention to how the room looks or whether it’s functional. If it’s time to bring your bathroom into the 21st century with a renovation, you may find yourself having to move plumbing fittings. While that can help you achieve the results you’re after, moving bathroom plumbing is often a very involved process. If you’re working to a budget then we always recommend asking your plumber for a quote before you start tearing up the tiles. To help you plan your project, we’re going to look at how much it costs to move bathroom plumbing and how you can plan around those additional expenses.
How Much Does it Cost to Move Plumbing Fittings?
When moving bathroom plumbing fittings, you can expect to pay between $100 for minor work, up to $2,000 or more for complex jobs. Minor work could include things like moving pipework or reconfiguring your plumbing to switch from a wall mounted faucet to a sink mounted faucet. Complex jobs include things like moving a toilet or changing the position of a shower:
Toilets.
The waste pipes for toilets are often buried in the cement foundations of your home, so you can expect to pay $2,000 or more to move a toilet.Showers and baths.
Moving a built-in shower or bath is one of the biggest bathroom plumbing tasks. You’ll need to pay to move the drains as well as the supply pipes that feed the shower head, and you may need to replace sections of the in-floor drain pipe as well.Sinks and faucets.
If you’re simply updating your bathroom vanity for a more modern option then it might only cost a few hundred dollars to move the supply and waste lines. But, if you’re changing the position of the vanity entirely, you could expect to pay $1,000 or more to move the plumbing.Floor drains.
The central floor drain in your bathroom often connects to the waste lines from your shower or bath. Moving floor drains is major work that is likely to cost more than $2,000, especially if the drain is buried in a concrete foundation.
What You Need to Know About Moving Plumbing
The prices we discussed above are only representative, and the actual amount you pay depends on a huge number of factors. Mostly though, the cost of moving bathroom plumbing comes down to the amount of labour involved. While it’s fairly simple to move a faucet by a few centimetres, large jobs like moving in-floor drains can take days to complete. The cost of moving plumbing in a bathroom depends on a range of things:
- What type of plumbing fittings you’re moving
- The foundation material (e.g. concrete vs timber beams)
- The location of the bathroom in the house (e.g. ground floor vs second storey)
- Whether waterproofing needs to be replaced
- The location of drains and whether they can be reused
Don’t forget to include the cleanup cost in your budget. Moving plumbing can be messy work, and your plumber may need to remove tiles or wall plaster that you’ll need to replace later.
Planning Your Bathroom Renovation
As you can see, it’s not always simple or cheap to move major plumbing fixtures in your bathroom. The best way to avoid that expense is to plan a bathroom renovation that works around your existing fittings and drains. While that’s not quite as fun as ripping everything out and starting from scratch, you can save thousands of dollars every time you choose to reuse a fitting. Just the same, you can control the cost of your bathroom renovation by only moving certain fixtures. For example, if you’re generally happy with the placement of the toilet and shower, they can stay where they are and you can use that money to replace the sink and vanity instead.
Plan Your Next Bathroom Renovation Project with S&J Plumbing!
The best thing you can do to manage the cost of your renovation is to get a quote before you start work. A professional plumber will be happy to visit your home and help figure out what the best options are for your bathroom renovation project. If you’d like to avoid the hassle and expense of moving bathroom fixtures, contact S&J Plumbing and Gasfitting! We’re experienced plumbers in Brisbane, and our team is equipped to help with everything from leaky taps to major renovation works. Our plumbers have seen it all, and we’ve got plenty of useful advice that can help stretch your renovation budget further. Get in touch with us today to make an appointment, or phone us on 1300 600 508 to talk about your project!