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Escutcheon: Architectural Details by IDS-DMV

Escutcheons: The architectural details you didn’t know you needed – IDS-DMV’s expertise unveiled

An architectural eschutcheon is basically just a trim ring that covers the perimeter edge of a pipe, bar, or tube where the pipe or ither item penetrates through or mounts to a another surface.

A picture below shows an example of a fire suppression sprinkler head in a drywall ceiling with a white eschutcheon trim ring around the perimeter of the sprinkler head.  There are various types of sprinkler heads and sprinkler systems, but this is one of the most common types: a wet-pipe fire suppression system.

escutcheon

Escutcheons are used at exposed walls (or other surfaces like floors and ceilings) where pipes penetrate from inside the wall to outside the wall.  The most common place that we see escutcheons or trim rings is in areas below sinks. Pipes are generally run in concealed spaces such as inside of wall cavities between the framing members. Where the pipes actually turn and come outside of the wall to connect to a sink they have to go through things like drywall or ceramic tile finished surfaces. The pipe penetrating through the wall cannot match up to make a clean finished surface. If you were to apply plaster, joint compound, grout from the wall directly to the pipe, differential micro-movements between the wall and pipe would cause there to invariably be separation and or delamination between the pipe and wall.  If the plaster, for example were finsihed clean and smooth, a crack would occur around the perimeter of the pipe.  It is a better practice to apply a liberal amount of acrylic sealant to join the pipe to the wall and the apply an eschutcheon to cover the joint between the pipe and the wall.

In the image below you can see an example of a pipe that runs through the finished face of a ceramic tile covered wall, to a sink angle stop. An eschutcheon trim ring has been installed to conceal the joint between the pipe and the wall.

eschutcheon at sink angle stop valve to cover wall penetration hole
Eschutcheon at sink angle stop valve to cover wall penetration hole

In the image below you can see an example of a stainless steel tubular bar mounted to a stainless steel sheet metal wall panel.

Stainless steel eschutcheon
Stainless steel eschutcheon

In the next photo below, the eschutcheon has been removed to the the stainless bar’mounting flange where the bar is screw fastened to the wall panel. If the finished product were left like this without an eschutcheon plate it would look raw and unfinished and rough.

escutcheon types
Mounting flange

Penetration registry is an important part of quality control management in large scale industrial construction.  Penetrations have an large set of requirements that apply.  In a typical facility construction project there are a variety of different types of penetrations, each with a different set of requirements.  The process of penetration registry begins before the construction begins by listing all tyoes ogñf designed penetrations against a chart of all buildung assembly types which are to be penetrated, and then listing all requirements for each type of location.

The full list of requirements can be derived from many sources such as

1. Building code

2.  Fire Marshall

3.  Architectural design

4.  Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing (MEP) system design

4.  Weatherproofing design

Identifying all requirements may be complicated because requirements may vary from one project to another with varying building class and zoning requiremets and variation from one local municipality to another with differing authorities having jurisdiction.

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