Odd sewer pipe configuration

[nealtw]

Not saying that you're particularly wrong, but a lot of kids and older people have died from stepping on concrete lids http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sinkhole-danger-old-septic-tanks/ from old septic tanks/cesspools. Granted, maybe some are stronger than others. But they noted that "as the homes were modernized, the cesspools were abandoned and forgotten. During the years, however, the concrete covers crack and break down, which could lead to a sinkhole in your yard." One lady's son was 2 years old and fell in one just outside of their house. While she was trying to pull him out, pieces of the concrete lid were falling in on top of him. So for whatever reason, I guess some states might be worse than others (temperatures, environment, etc.).

They built a concrete box and instead of forming the lid from inside, they laid boards across the top and put a thin coat of concrete over that. As the boards have long since rotted away, the thin concrete lid has trouble holding it's own weight.

I would expect the tank to be very close to where you have been digging and the broken pipes you have found may well be the pieces that went to the tank from where you are.

 

[jmr106]

Generally a septic tank will follow a straight line from the first stick of pipe after the one leaving the house- turns are usually made there if they are needed. Probe the soil with a small stiff rod down to a few feet and you should find it. You might also locate it by the greeness of grass over the drain field lines since they "y" off just past the tank. Look at the land and think of where you'd set a tank and that's often where it is. If it's not filled, I'd do that for sure.

Well, since we have a dog...lots of her favorite spots are very green. About 33% of the yard where she goes has its own greenery. If there was just one sewer pipe coming from the house, it would be easier. But there's one under a bedroom window that is for the bathroom sink and washing machine drain. That goes to the main sewer. Then there's the toilet/tub/kitchen sink drain that goes out in the earlier photo next to the a/c and also joins the same sewer line that goes out to the street. I assume that the toilet pipe would be better to follow. However, those pipes are about 15-20 feet apart from each other.

 

[jmr106]

I will be checking around in the morning. Checking with the public works/water & sewer departments to see if I can get a map of what may have been in the area of this land when the house was built.

Called the real estate division of the local courthouse today. They referred me to water & sewer and gave me a phone number in regards to any ditches/drains/sewer questions. I'd like to know in what year this property went to city sewer and if they have record of any work in the yard, septic tank, etc.

They also gave me the planning and zoning department and a phone number...more specifically to help with the septic tank and sewer questions. As I figured, so many of the county departments are so intermingled that they aren't sure where to direct you. I'm betting that calling those numbers will get me more numbers or referred back to the courthouse that gave me the numbers.

I've located the plat map and parcel # online. Pretty big yard for a residential house crammed up against others in a neighborhood. 67' feet wide in the front and back yard, and 205 feet long from front to back. The higher majority of that is the back yard. So that's quite a space to be looking for something under the ground...

Interestingly enough, 8 or 9 houses down the street, there is an extension arm of the local creek that shows as flowing through their back yard (that would make it up hill if the creek fed it, so that can't be the case) on said map. It just pops out of nowhere in their yard on the map and runs down and flows into the creek down the street. It only the creek itself is labeled. Confusing. The old topo maps maps showed it going under ours, too. Not expecting the maps to be too revealing. I'll probably never know the answer about whether or not something natural is feeding the water if I can't locate pipes in the crawlspace funneling it in.

 

[nealtw]

After the war we had lots of big lots like that and people built a kinda shack to live in and built there house over years as they could afford the material.

 

[jmr106]

Well, that was a big failure. I called Planning and Zoning. They don't have anything. They gave me Water & Sewer. I called Water & Sewer and they gave me Watershed. Called Watershed and they gave me the County Board of Health, Division of Environmental Health. She said I could pick the records up in person or get them by email. I chose email and got them within an hour or two. However, they sent the same property number for the address up the street - the road ends in Drive and not Circle, which is what it should have been. I called them back and the lady on the phone said, "I just happened to be walking into the office when they were talking about it and that's all that they have. They don't have the one for Circle, so we don't have what you're looking for" in a tone of voice as if she had an attitude.

Typical government workers. I knew it would be a run-around. I think she may have been too lazy to go scan another one. From the info that she did send:

The property up the street was built in 1949, just a year before the house I need records for. However, that house is up the street on the main road. This one is on a side road branching off from the main road. So it probably got sewer later than the house on the main road.

It did have a drawing for the house up the street:

Looks like theirs is about 14' from the house if I'm reading that correctly. Other info included is a 300 sq ft absorption area/100 linear feet, 36" trench depth and width, and they checked "no" for basement plumbing. But this was apparently for work done in 1999. Not too helpful, and it isn't even for our house, of course.


Thinking of getting a thin rod and just probing all over the yard until I hit something hard, or chasing the pipes on other side of the sewer line where they cut them off to run the sewer.

 

[frodo]

it is easy to find the old tank. follow the pipe,

i guarantee you they dug up the sewer ine, cut into it turned it to the street

the section the cut out is the trash you found,


the old pipe is in the ground, dig along beside the pipe to the tank

 

[jmr106]

She doesn't want me to change the sewer pipe run. However, I may run pvc to where it joins the main sewer and tee it off. The main sewer looks like clay pipe, but that cast iron pipe coming from the crawlspace and joining the main sewer is likely clogged inside with rust just like the kitchen drain pipe i replaced. Frodo, got any advice about that leftover p-trap looking thing still attached to the main sewer pipe? Looks like a cap or something that someone rigged. Cut it out of the main sewer line and bridge the main line with Ferncos or just bury it again as is? I think I'm the only one in decades that uncovered that. I'm more of an "all in or not at all" kind of person, but she doesn't want to put money into anything like that that won't even be visible since she's selling in the future anyway.

Two sewer lines still exit the house. Is my best bet to follow the one under the bedroom window (bathroom sink and washing machine drains) or the toilet/tube/kitchen sink drain pipe? Both of them had to have joined the septic together, and I'll bet there's another old septic pipe on the other side of where the pipe from the bedroom window joins the main sewer pipe. Will it hurt anything to leave the pipes there? Just wondering if I should be worried about any water issues from that if the septic was broken/filling up with water. The water flowing into the basement when it rains seems clean, but I'm sure it is filtered by a lot of dirt, as well. It doesn't smell or anything. During high flows it looks muddy...hard to tell if that is coming from the dirt outside or inside of the crawlspace.

 

[jmr106]

Septic tank found just on the other side of the sewer city line under about 16 inches of dirt. The mystery tin was also found. The large piece of old tin (very thin tin, at that) was deteriorated pretty badly and part of it caved in when I shoveled the dirt from the top of it. It was covering a hole. I dug it out and got this hole that is maybe 6 inches wide and several feet long:

On either side of that hole, there appears to be a cement cement slab probably 3" or so thick. Not sure if that's attached to the walls themselves or just something they brought in and covered it over with. I'm puzzled why they thought that thin tin would cover such a hole properly.

I'm pretty sure that I have reached the sides where the hole in the top ends (but that may not be the actual wall sides of the tank) and I have removed the tin piece that was covering this particular hole. I think there is more tin under the dirt that I haven't uncovered lengthwise yet. I'm currently unsure if there are more holes like this. Pardon the night pics, it shows up poorly in the daytime.

The only way to get a peek inside currently is taking an old cell phone and sticking it down into the edge of the hole to take pics with the flash. These are looking back towards the back yard:

The walls inside look somewhat solid, but its hard to say. On the back side towards the back yard, I see a single pipe extending down most of the way to the dirt floor. The depth is deceiving. At first I thought maybe 5 feet just under the opening. It looks like a lot of dirt has fallen in there or may have been there from when they covered it. Towards the back yard side, it looks more like 6-8 feet and possibly up to 10 feet deep into the ground. The pics don't really do it justice. The probe that I was sticking into the ground to find it...that was nearly 7 feet long. When I first found a little section of the hole, I stuck it down out of curiosity and it didn't even touch bottom. I could have dropped it and it would have kept falling.

Interesting pipe on the back side. I don't see it connected on the top, but it is "hanging" there somehow. It is possibly against the side of the wall and affixed somehow. Towards the back yard side, it goes back maybe 6-8 feet in length.

The side towards the house goes back maybe 2-3 feet max.

Towards the house side, I see this about a foot or so from the top of the tank:

This pipe is maybe 2+ feet back and underneath the slab that I was crawling on to get the pics. I can't tell if that's capped or just full of dirt. Obviously an old clay pipe. This must have been where the water was going into the tank from the house. This whole thing looks homemade, but maybe this is just how they made them back then.

I'll dig down and find that pipe, since it is maybe 1.5 feet underground at best. I'd like to see how well both of them are capped. I have read where most places state that you should break through the bottom of the walls to prevent water from being retained inside, but I'm not about to go into that thing. Thankfully, it appears to have already been pumped and/or everything dried up over the decades since it wasn't used. As soon as I popped the lid, there was a big swarm of mosquitoes around the open hole. Couldn't tell if they came from inside or just from around the yard.

 

[slownsteady]

Fill that hole and it is likely you won't be getting so much water in your basement. Even with crushed pipe, it's a likely path for water to follow.

 

[jmr106]

What are the possibilities of this being a major contributor to the water issues in the crawlspace?

The hole that I took the photos in is this far from the house, but the actual tank extends about another 2-3 feet towards the house:

I guess it could be that the wall inside has degraded and might also be leaking somewhere on the lower part of the wall. I will be attempting to fill it full of dirt in the future. I just want to get the whole thing dug out first and make sure that there aren't any more surprises. I'm hoping that there are more openings along the length of it that would allow me to fill it in on top. I don't want to punch through 3+ inches of concrete to open a hole to put dirt in various areas while filling it up.

That's also a heck of a lot of dirt. Nearly like filling a bedroom floor to ceiling with dirt. I know that a lot of places will actually give you free dirt by the truckloads. The left side of the yard has a chainlink fence. No access there. Even if I took the fence down, I'd have to cut a middle post off at the ground to get a big dump drunk through there. They would break the sump discharge pipe, possibly fracture the clay sewer line underground on the side of the house due to the weight, etc. The side to the right in the photo is what used to be an old driveway that ran along the side of the house near the back porch. Most of it is intact. Not a lot of room to work with over there, especially for something like a big dump truck Maybe 7-8 feet wide. I'm scared they'd take out the porch, awning, fence dividing the properties, etc. I'd have to measure the width between the back porch and the fence. Lots of humpy bumpy going on with that driveway and it isn't used and is behind gates anyway. So I'm trying to figure out how the heck I'm going to get that much dirt back there. It appears that a lot of the "free fill dirt" places either want you to pick it up yourself or you have to be a contractor to use their services.

 

[slownsteady]

Chain link fence can be removed from the posts and reinstalled afterwards. Measure the space between posts. On the other side, bushes can be cut back. A dump truck can definitely take the abuse of a few humpy bumpies. Cheap fill shouldn't be too hard to get.

 

[slownsteady]

http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/ehs/wastewater/owners/works.aspx

A septic tank would have a half pipe, which would channel the water from the middle of the tank (sludge is at the bottom, grease at the top) into the leetch field

 

[jmr106]

Chain link fence can be removed from the posts and reinstalled afterwards. Measure the space between posts. On the other side, bushes can be cut back. A dump truck can definitely take the abuse of a few humpy bumpies. Cheap fill shouldn't be too hard to get.

Any idea how small dump trucks come? Tomorrow, I'm going to measure the width that the gates open and between the fence and porch to see how wide it is. I'm going to have to make that side work. Way too much going on to take that fence down and add on another project to find the time to put it back up.

 

[jmr106]

I'm thinking that this one may be something like this:

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZayXc3CNpA[/ame]

It is the only possible configuration that I've found so far that remotely resembles it. Possibly slab lids. Haven't tried to lift any. I'm assuming that they're probably a couple of hundred pounds each. Some tanks seem to have compartments, but this one is just one big tank. I'll have to get back to you on that middle pipe thing...not even sure if it has one. I don't see anything sticking down into it in the middle, which is just a couple of feet from where I've dug up the area. I didn't see a pipe in the middle so far. I presume that the pipe hanging on the back side of the wall is possibly still connected the the drainage area somewhere further out into the yard.

So far, I have been searching around and haven't found an explanation as to what this small gap is in between the slabs that they felt the need to put thin tin over. I don't see anything like that even in the video. The opening of their slab lids is about 2-3 times the little opening that I've found that is apparently in between the slabs for some reason.

 

[jmr106]

7 feet of width on that driveway side between the fence and porch. I'd estimate more on the 6.5 feet side to avoid taking out the awning.

I'm thinking of just getting some really thick plastic and spreading it across the driveway in the back yard on the inside of the gates and up against the edge of the fence (to keep dirt from going through the chainlink fence into the neighbor's yard). Then having them back up and dump right there on the driveway just inside of the gates. Use a wheelbarrow to take it back to the hole and dump it.

The depth is definitely deceiving. I used a long pipe and bent it accordingly to get a closer measurement today.

Final measurement that I'm going with is: 4.2 feet deep under the whole (given that some dirt has fallen in from opening the hole), 10 feet long and 4 feet wide. Still fairly deep, but thankfully not as deep as originally thought.

168 cubic feet of dirt? How do I figure out how many cubic yards that is? Apparently the companies deliver based on cubic yards.

 

[nealtw]

A cubic yard is 3x3x3+27 cu ft 168 / 27= about 6 yards = 60 to 80 wheelbarrows

 

[jmr106]

I have a majority of the top uncovered now. So far, the only other opening that I have come across is a tiny crack about an inch or so wide. That quickly filled with dirt as I was digging. That's about a foot or two back from the larger opening towards the back yard side. I thought I would come across more tin, but so far nothing but a little piece here and there. The slab on the back side of the hole has a different sound and sounds more hollow or something. I was wondering if it was going to cave in at a few points and started digging from the side until I determined that it was quite stable. I'll just have to keep digging and see what I see further back. I'll need an opening better than that tiny opening to fill this thing up. I'm hoping that some of the slabs lift off and haven't been cemented when they pumped it. However, I'd be quite happy to find another larger opening with tin over it that I can punch through. I'm not fond of the idea of how much one of those slabs weigh. One person trying to grab a single side and move it would result in the other side diving into the hole. Unless, of course...I stood on another nearby slab and pulled the slab up and over on top of the slab, hoping that it can hold the weight.

To prevent any happy little accidents with the dog or anyone somehow forgetting about it, I have roped it off with landscaping fabric and also secured it to the ground to keep any wandering whatevers away.

 

[slownsteady]

My first thought is to take a sledge hammer to the cover and let be part of the fill.....but wait till you have dirt delivered before doing that. Other thought is to lift just one end and slip a 2x4 under it, then do the same to the other end. Then you could slide it or "roll" it off.

 

[nealtw]

You will ind that you have three panels and one has been slide sideways to open it up for pumping. The pump guy left it open with a promise from people on site that is would be back filled.

When we dealt with these things we were to break the lid or drop the lid in and knock the side down so the would be 12" below surface. Usually you can move the lids around with a 5' digging bar.
Sand is your best filler as you add sand and water and it will fill every nook and cranny.

BTW, great job on finding this thing, good for you.:thbup:

 

[jmr106]

As for the dirt delivery...can't drop that in the front yard. On the side of the house where the chainlink fence is, even if I took down the fence, I'd have to dig out a metal fence post in the center. Then they'd drive around in the truck and break the pvc sump pipe running way out into the back yard. I'm sure the weight of a dump truck would probably crack the clay sewer pipe on the side of the house running out the street, then I'd have another headache. Plus, the neighbor on that side is a bit...bonkers and I don't want to look at him. The back porch side of the house is too small to let any type of dump truck into the back driveway.

The only way that I can see is those gates. They swing outward towards the front driveway. Trim the bushes back on the front, open the gates as far as they will go and either get some really, really thick plastic or some kind of large thick tarp. Put it flat on the back driveway area and also run it vertical and flat up against the fence to prevent dirt from getting to the neighbor's yard. That's just overgrown bushes on the other side of that and they never go there anyway, but I'd like to make an effort to be neighborly. It should help keep the back driveway from becoming a muddy mess, too. Once most of the dirt is removed from on top of the plastic/tarp, just drag it away into the back yard. In theory, at least.

I'm unsure of the current codes. Not about to call the county and ask or to "report" that I've filled it in. Given our county, they'd probably fine me for not being licensed/try to send out an inspector or something dumb like that. I've read that in some cities, they require it to be pumped and filled. Of course, they've already pumped it a long time ago. I'm planning to fill it. In other areas, they require complete destruction of it, removal of the structure and filling in of the hole remaining. So, when the house is sold later in the future...if anyone asks, I'll simply say that it was found and had already been filled. Going to check those clay pipes on either side of it and make sure that they capped them properly.