2 sanitary lines out of house?

[Mike Garrod]

I am looking at doing a Reno for a friend of mine who is redoing the basement. Upon inspection I noticed his current downstairs set up drains out of the boys about 6" above the slab, and his upstairs drains out of house about 5' above the slab. Current basement bathroom is built up about 12". has anyone seen something like this before?

 

[Reach4]

I have seen more than one sewer line out to a city sewer from a basement wall 4 to 4.5 feet above the basement floor.

I have not seen such a low wall penetration. I think it most probably was done, vs bringing the sewer under the floor, to avoid messing with the foundation when the basement bathroom was added.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Mike Garrod]

Thank you for the input. It just seems odd especially since they are only about 5' away from each other horizontally.

 

[Reach4]

Is there a pump for pumping floor drain and laundry water to the higher sewer?

 

[Mike Garrod]

No. I think the lower line was initially just for a laundry tub, as it ties into the side outlet of the wye, and the bathroom was added later tying into where the clean out should be on the wye. What I want to do is install a lift station that will drain all fixtures in the basement and pump them up to the higher sanitary line out of the house.

In doing so I want to eliminate the lower line out of house altogether. My next question would be is it possible to cut that wye off (as it's partially buried in the wall) flush, and fill it with something instead of having to dig up the yard and cap it out there?

 

[Reach4]

I guess I don't know how things are done in Reno. I was expecting that basements were not common there. They seem to be fairly rare in AZ and Calif. Is there no floor drain in that basement?

Penetrations of a line to the city sewer is commonly done for "overhead sewers". In that case, basement loads are pumped up to the overhead sewer above ground level. The purpose is to avoid city sewer backups into the basement. It is effective. Your idea of putting in the grinder pump to feed up to the higher sewer is good for preventing backups if there is no floor drain, in addition to getting rid of that elevated floor.

Since you have no pump already, I guess that was not the case. Perhaps the wall penetration method was to avoid digging. If it was laundry tub drain put in during original construction, I would have expected the pipe to be 2 inch pipe. If it is 3 inches or bigger, I would suspect it was put in to serve the toilet. But I could easily be mistaken-- maybe 2 inch lines out to the sewer are not permitted.

I am not a plumber. I cannot say how to treat the line that you want to deactivate, but I might be tempted to turn it into a cleanout.

 

[Jadnashua]

Pumps are to be avoided when gravity can move things for free and more reliably...gravity doesn't break! IOW, I'd only use a pump if it was required.