Greywater System Question

guyute65045

Hello I am new to the forum nice to meet you all, I have been a lurker for a bit. I am 35, live in the NE and I grew up framing houses, since I finished school I keep bouncing back and forth between cooking and carpentry.

I have a question regarding things underground, so here goes.
I own a house that did not have proper footing drains installed, last summer I hired an excavator to do some work and fix them.While he was installing the out drain he ran into some pipe about 25 feet north of the bottom of my leech field. There were two pipes running parallel east to west, eventually hitting daylight about 75 feet from where they were uncovered. After a whole mess with the state being called due to assumtions that the previous home owner daylighted a failed septic, I determined that the pipes were infact connected to floor darins in my basement. When the excavator fixed the pipes he hit, he only reconnected one of the two, as one was bone dry. Unbeknownst to me one of the pipes was getting the wash water from my washing machine and that was the pipe he did not reconnect. Now after 2 months of not being connected the water started to back up into my basement. I dug the pipe up by hand and am going to put a Y in and fix the problem so I dont back up anymore. I am also going to hook the washer up to my main drain as I do not want wash water running out of a daylighted greywater system. My question is this, when I got to the pipe it is semi perforated, meaning that every 18" or so there are two holes, it is also in a small bed of stone. At first when I saw the holes I was worried that the previous owner did do something shady with the septic, but I have done rakework on a conventional septic installation and the trench/stone/pipe configuration was much different. Does anybody have experience with greywater systems? I did an internet search but that just gave me 100 varying opinions, it has been my experience that the people who do the digging know best when it comes to things like this. Thanks a ton.

farmboy555

Ijust did the same thingwith the floor drain in my basement. The AC is the only thing that drains into it. So about 20 ft from the house I use peferated (my spelling sucks) pipe layed on & covered with #4 rock on a down grade for about 80 ft with the end opened. The water from the AC will leach out in the gravel before it gets to the end & if I have anything major, as in water in the basement. It can go out quickly thru the end of the pipe. I think this keeps frm a muddy/wet spot in your yard where the drain pipe ends. dennis

guyute65045

That makes sense, I just figured that if you were going to daylight something you would use solid pipe. A lot of what the previous owner did was odd. The only thing going through this pipe was the washing machine, he also had the dryer hooked up to vent out of the same pipe. He had a vent stack set up but it ended just short of the celing in the basement, so the space in between the walls is full of lint. Needless to say that after 2.5 months of wash water just goingthrough a pipe that did not get hooked back up I have some saturated ground. I gues I have some good percolation if it just backed up now. Thanks for the input, I can pound nails and I can really cook but drainage is all new to me.

denick

In Conn. grey water systems aren't allowed and any grey water that is exiting to the surface could be a big liability.

That said to do it correctly you should have some kind of tank or well for sediment collection and some type of leaching / overflow field. it wouldn't have to be much in size. The tank could be 5 X's the gallons of one use of the washer? The field about the same in capacity.

__________________
Nick

"Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving" Albert Einstein