Insulation system schedules, drafted from the spec and drawings before your estimator counts a foot of pipe.

A bid set arrives with a mechanical specification and a stack of plans. Somewhere in Division 23, and often Division 22, an engineer has said which services get insulated, in what, how thick, and what goes over it. The drawings add the routing: what sits in a mechanical room, what runs above a ceiling, what goes outdoors. Your estimator turns that into one schedule before takeoff starts, because a count against the wrong system is wasted.

In the test, AI reads copies of those documents and drafts the schedule: one row per service and size band, with material, thickness, jacket and location, and the section and paragraph behind each value. Two lists sit under it, one for services the spec leaves out and one for lines where the spec and the drawings say different things. Nothing is priced or submitted, and your estimator checks every row.

Each owner breaks the rows differently. Duke University's standard runs on columns for service, marker, size, material, thickness, finish and color, with steam broken at 3 inches and 4 inches and condensate at 2 and 2-1/2. Condenser water gets no insulation and a coat of dark green enamel, process water shows a thickness of TBD, and relief vents show n/a. Duke also says project specs shall carry an insulation and jacketing schedule in table format; where a set has none, your estimator builds one. New York State's master specification sorts chilled water by temperature first, at 40 degrees F and below or above 40 and below 60, then by pipe size. The draft keeps each spec's own breaks and lists TBD and n/a rows for your estimator.

Master specs leave their choices showing. The University of Houston's section still carries bracketed options and blanks for chilled water runouts, and a footnote that adds a half inch of thickness where insulation is exposed to outdoor ambient temperature. New York's says that where more than one material is listed, the choice is the contractor's, and its editor's notes warn that tubular elastomeric isn't made above NPS 6 and that elastomeric and polyisocyanurate stop at 1 inch to hold a flame-spread index of 25 and a smoke-developed index of 50. A bid set may arrive with those options still open. The draft quotes each option as printed and doesn't choose.

Location is more than exposed or concealed. New York's jacket schedule sorts endless variations into those two words, and real jobs add height. Western Washington University wants metal jackets on steam and condensate less than 8 feet above the floor, Houston offers a protective covering within 6 feet of the finished floor in mechanical and air handling unit rooms, and Cornell wants aluminum or PVC over jacketing in high traffic areas. Duke puts vinyl or canvas jacketing on all ductwork and piping in mechanical rooms, penthouses and general equipment spaces. The spec gives the rule and the drawings decide which feet of a run it touches. Where plans don't show elevation, the draft says so.

Owners disagree about what gets insulated at all. Cornell's standard requires insulation on whole strainer bodies and blowdown valves, steam traps, control valves with their actuators and gearboxes, low point drains and air separators, and says this typically goes beyond industry master specifications. Western Washington tells designers not to insulate control valve actuators, steam traps or heating water pumps unless burn protection calls for it, and to use removable covers on flanges and control valves. New York's items not insulated include factory-insulated flexible ducts, flexible connectors, vibration-control devices and chrome-plated pipe unless someone could be hurt. Cornell insulates dedicated outside air ducts in unconditioned space even within a 15 degree F difference. The first open list is what the documents leave out or leave unclear.

Code references age, and a table can contradict itself. Washington State's energy code sets minimum pipe thickness by fluid temperature, conductivity and pipe size, with a footnote formula for material outside the listed conductivity range, an exception for fluids between 60 and 105 degrees F, and a rule that outdoor protection be removable for at least six feet from equipment, with no adhesive tape. One campus plumbing standard from 2019 still cites ASHRAE 90.1-2007 and lists non-potable lines 2-1/2 inches and larger twice, at two thicknesses. The test never decides what a code requires, and nothing on this page is legal or engineering advice. Your reviewer will look first at size bands that overlap or leave a gap, TBD rows, a thickness on one document only, jackets that change with height, and valves, strainers and traps neither document mentions.

With your reviewer's yes, new bid specs go through the same job for about 30 days.

Your estimator approves every schedule before a quantity is built on it, and bids and qualifications still leave your office the way they do today.

You get a fixed price for the live job before signing. A later job is priced alone, and monthly support begins once one is running.