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Home > Archive > Home Repair forum > January 2008 > Re: City water/sewer, but home sewer pipe extremely high
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Re: City water/sewer, but home sewer pipe extremely high
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| On Jan 31, 9:32=A0am, "EXT" <noem...@reply.in.this.group> wrote:
> Very likely your house was originally on a septic tank. Probably the first=
> house on the street. The pipe would exit through the wall and enter the
> septic tank a few feet away. Since the septic tank would be just a foot or=
> possibly slightly deeper below the soil level, the pipe exiting the house
> could not go any deeper. This is the way it is with septic tanks.
>
> A common practice when converting over to city sewers, is to collapse or
> remove the septic tank and connect the sewer line to the drain pipe where =
it
> previously entered the septic tank. This is why your drain line exits the
> house so high. Possibly the city sewer lateral will be a different materia=
l
> to the pipe exiting your house, and most likely it will angle down deeper =
to
> connect with the sewer main. Depending on when the sewer connection was
> installed will determine what type of piping material they used.
>
>snip<
Our Taj Mahal here in small town Central Illinois had just exactly
that setup when we bought it. Worked fine for a number of years, then
lots of trouble. Turned out that the septic tank had collapsed,
because back in 1908 or whenever, it was easier to fabricate and
install a steel tank than to deal with huge and heavy cast concrete
structures that came later. Time and corrosion finally did it in and
the only solution to that problem was a new line to the sewer in the
street which happened to be more than a dozen feet underground IIRC.
There was also a dug water well maybe ten feet away with an old hand
pump on top. The state EPA had a contractor come in and fill the well
due to some obscure law about its location within half mile of a
school. So our back yard finally lost that quaint country look.
Anyway, the drain line going through the wall a foot and a half below
ground level has never caused any problems. And in fact, there is a
sewer vent line just outside projecting out of the ground about 2' or
so, grandfathered in by the old building codes.. It isn't pretty, but
when the bushes get a little higher it will be a non-issue.
Joe
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