About Your Sewer Pit
Not too bad but could be cleaner.
If you live in a city like Astoria, NYC (where Woosh is based) then your building will have a house trap. Sometimes this trap will be exposed and elevated above the basement floor. Most times it will be in a pit in either the ground floor or basement. This sewer pit will have at least one cleanout.
Your sewer pit will usually be at the front of the house next to the water meter. Many first-time homeowners need to be made aware of it’s location and purpose. It is not uncommon for new owners or ignorant contractors to pour concrete or tile over a sewer pit. This is an inevitable and costly problem at some point.
All of the drains in a building end up flowing into the main house trap before going into the municipal sewer in the street. The exception may be a storm drain which is routed elsewhere like a “dry-well” or into it’s own main storm trap. If you see a sewer pit with 4 cleanouts (2 for each trap) then you will need to identify which trap serves the storm and sewer.
The purpose of the main house trap is to keep sewer gases out of the house. The purpose of the cleanouts is to be able to “clean-out” the trap or snake IN (towards the house) or snake OUT (towards the street). The sewer pit itself may have poured concrete or the trap can just be in soil. The important takeaways are that the sewer pit be kept clean with removeable cleanout plugs/caps.
The reason a sewer pit should be kept clean is if the sewer pit floods. To minimize this, always open the OUT plug first. If a clog is cleared, the contents of a flooded pit will flow into the sewer pipe and possibly create chronic problems. For instance, there may construction debris, rocks or any other debris that won’t disintegrate. Any such debris can stay in the pipe indefinitely and allow sewage to build up on a regular basis.
Another important issue; The original plugs on a house trap may be brass. Depending on their age, they may need to be cut out because they are seized and can’t unscrew as intended. The new plugs would most likely be Lead Fit-alls that are tapped into place because the threads are gone and can be easily removed by tapping them side-to-side.
Because time is so important with emergency clogs, the pointers are repeated here:
Know where your sewer pit is
Keep your sewer pit clean
Be able to Identify your cleanouts
Confirm that the cleanout covers can easily be removed
If you like these pointers, please forward this post to someone who’d appreciate it also. Stay Clog-Free!
