When You Can't Use The Sewer

On today’s show we are talking about how having a sewer pipe at the edge of your property may or may not be useful.

It’s a very common assumption that if the city services are available in the street, or perhaps nearby, you can have access to sewer services for your project.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Most sewer systems are designed to be gravity fed. So in an ideal world, the sewage treatment plant would be located at the lowest point in the city and the sewer pipes would all flow downhill to the treatment plant.

Sadly, not all cities are convenient enough to make that statement a reality.

If a gravity fed system is not possible, then a lift station is going to be needed to pump the sewage uphill. Hopefully at that point, the difference in height will be enough for a gravity fed system to handle it from there.

Gravity fed systems need to flow down hill. So in a perfectly flat topography, your sewer pipe will have to get deeper, and deeper and deeper in order to maintain a gravity feed.

You might contact the city to gain access to the sewer service that is passing in front of your property. After all, there is a pipe only a short distance from your property line. Surely accessing the sewer service should not be a problem. Bu then the city engineer regrets to inform you that the sewer line doesn’t have the capacity to support the size of your proposed project.

You might be tempted to think, why can’t the city plan for growth? After all, just put in a big pipe and save yourself the hassle of having to upgrade the pipe in the future.

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Host: Victor Menasce

email: podcast@victorjm.com