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stilloldduck

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My wife and I recently purchased a home built around 1900. Digging in the side yard, we ran into a pipe coming out from under or house we didn't know about. We followed it and found it went into what looks like a metal barrel buried in the ground.

There are two pipes running into the barrel - the one we followed and another one. They both come out of the top of the barrel and both run under our house in the general direction of the laundry room (which, long ago, used to be the back porch). I'm attaching a pic file to show what I mean (for some reason the pic comes across upside down).

Before we do anything with the pipes, I was hoping someone could offer some insight into what this might be. We have a neighbor who has been around for a long time and he thought it might be a dry well from before the house was added to the municipal water system.

Any help would be appreciated.

Barrel & Pipes.jpg
 
In the old days it was common to not run water from say a laundry or shower or kitchensink into the septic tank. Many times they would have what they called a grease trap ahead of the leach field and run this gray water directly into that bypassing the septic tank. I had a 55 gallon barrel buried at my old house used like that when I bought it and before I redid the whole system.

Hard to say what that was for exactly.

Are you now on city water and sewage system?
 
The one pipe looks to be 1/2 or 3/4 inch. That's too small for a drain line. The only way to be sure would be to open it up and look.
It is possible that it was oil tank for heating oil. It would be a small tank but possible.
 
In the old days it was common to not run water from say a laundry or shower or kitchensink into the septic tank. Many times they would have what they called a grease trap ahead of the leach field and run this gray water directly into that bypassing the septic tank. I had a 55 gallon barrel buried at my old house used like that when I bought it and before I redid the whole system.

Hard to say what that was for exactly.

Are you now on city water and sewage system?

your saying they would add hot water to the grease tank to liquify? the solidified grease? interesting concept, would actually work, but the cost of the heating of the water would cost preventative.
maybe thats why the stopped doing it
 
your saying they would add hot water to the grease tank to liquify? the solidified grease? interesting concept, would actually work, but the cost of the heating of the water would cost preventative.
maybe thats why the stopped doing it



No they didn’t add hot water and they just called it a grease trap. It was more of a soap trap actually. The outlet in mine came in to a tee one leg facing up and open the other facing down with a leg that went to the middle of the tank. The idea some stuff would float some would sink and the leach field would take the water from the middle. Both the septic and the gray water emptied into this small tank. The kitchen sink, shower and laundry with lots of soap would bypass the septic as they thought this stuff was bad for a septic. When you would have your septic pumped you would also have them suck about a foot of waxy grease off the bottom of the grease trap tank. The tank kept all that stuff out of the leach field and also acted like a distribution box.

I don’t know for sure what the OP’s tank is and that small pipe is all about. Open it up and find out was good advice.

People never took old tanks out of filled them they just forgot about them.
 
open it up, yes sir, that was first thought when i saw it.

wanna know what it is..open it. might be full of gold , or sludge or ant colony
 
Thanks for the response. Yes, this property has been on the city system since the 60s, so I'm assuming this setup (whatever it is) has probably been unused since that time
 
They run back toward the back porch (which has been the laundry room for quite a while).
 

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