Would you put a toilet in the middle of a hallway?

Of course not…but we often see sanitary sewer floor cleanout covers (FCO – provides access to sanitary pipes for maintenance) in hallways and common areas.  With the $$$ spent on flooring in those areas why allow designers to put FCOs in the high traffic areas?  Encourage your plumbing engineer to locate FCOs away from high traffic areas or, even better, convert to wall clean outs (WCO).  Be careful, WCOs need to be coordinated with the wall’s fire and structural rating, or you might run into coordination issues in the field and unhappy inspectors.