Sewer Belly

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Matthew Ravas

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Hello everyone,

I have a 125 year old house in the Pittsburgh area that I've owned for about five years. My downspouts empty into my sewer line, so, once in awhile, a long lasting rainstorm would cause water to back up through a floor drain in our basement.

I've had my sewer line looked at multiple times and received different answers each time (from multiple companies). We did find that the pipe running from the clean out to the road was mostly smashed and blocked by tree roots, so a company came out, excavated, replaced the clean out, and a ran a new liner the rest of the way to the road. So far, 8k, but in theory the biggest problem was fixed.

As my sewer line is terracotta and at least several decades old, I asked if they could also put in a new liner from the clean out to the house. They said they could not because 55 of the 80 feet of pipe was bellied and defective and retaining water. They wanted another 12k to excavate and replace the pipe.

When I asked the plumber if this was causing the backup problem or if the first fix was adequate, he said he couldn't actually tell just from looking at it. My question is, is 55 feet of belly possible (out of 80), and if it were a/the problem, wouldn't it be fairly severe? The line to the street made sense as it was smashed into a half moon shape and clearly slow draining, but we've never had a normal usage blockage or backup that we know of.

Thanks for the advice.
 

Reach4

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Do you have reason to believe that the city sewer itself is not full under those conditions? It may be that if your gutters were not adding clean water, that dirty water might be backing up into the basement.

Can you look down your new cleanout, using a bright spotlight, and see how full the sewer is?

If making a cure, you might consider also switching to overhead sewers in the process. That is going to bump up the cost considerably. The buildings at lower altitude will get filled basements, until they take action. Then the next highest, and so forth.

A belly would only limit flow if it had largely filled with solids. If the water is high in the city sewer, a new straight PVC sewer won't help that.
 

Matthew Ravas

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Do you have reason to believe that the city sewer itself is not full under those conditions? It may be that if your gutters were not adding clean water, that dirty water might be backing up into the basement.

Can you look down your new cleanout, using a bright spotlight, and see how full the sewer is?

If making a cure, you might consider also switching to overhead sewers in the process. That is going to bump up the cost considerably. The buildings at lower altitude will get filled basements, until they take action. Then the next highest, and so forth.

A belly would only limit flow if it had largely filled with solids. If the water is high in the city sewer, a new straight PVC sewer won't help that.

Other than the fact that, anecdotally, none of our neighbors have reported a backup, I wouldn't know. Most the backups have resulted in two gallons or less in total coming up. Only once was it severe enough to put about an inch of standing water in the basement, and that was after about 36 consecutive hours of rain.

I think you're confirming my belief that if the majority of the line is bellied, and that was the cause, we'd have had this happen constantly.
 

Reach4

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Other than the fact that, anecdotally, none of our neighbors have reported a backup, I wouldn't know. Most the backups have resulted in two gallons or less in total coming up. Only once was it severe enough to put about an inch of standing water in the basement, and that was after about 36 consecutive hours of rain.
Some people put a "test plug" into the floor drain. You would then have to deal with seepage water somehow other than through that drain.

I think you're confirming my belief that if the majority of the line is bellied, and that was the cause, we'd have had this happen constantly.
If there was enough sediment in the bottom of the belly to restrict the flow to 30 gpm, then 35 gpm would cause some backing up. If it is clean water from rain, that is not nearly as bad as dirty water.
 

Matthew Ravas

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Some people put a "test plug" into the floor drain. You would then have to deal with seepage water somehow other than through that drain.


If there was enough sediment in the bottom of the belly to restrict the flow to 30 gpm, then 35 gpm would cause some backing up. If it is clean water from rain, that is not nearly as bad as dirty water.

No one mentioned anything about sediment, just standing water.

As the line is, at minimum, sixty years old, I also don't know if it's only a matter of time anyway and I might as well have it done now. On the other hand, it's 12k that I'd rather not give away for a problem that might not yet exist.
 

Jeff H Young

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the belly wont stop clear water from draining . but solids likely will build up , if enough water comes down it could help wash it out . I dont think 36 hours of rain be any worse than 8 hours of rain . if your sewer is the problem it would back up should it rain 60 hours a pipe cant be any more full than full.
perhaps jetting befor rainy season once a year.
question for op what was deciding factor for lining the sewer vs replacing pipe?
 

Matthew Ravas

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the belly wont stop clear water from draining . but solids likely will build up , if enough water comes down it could help wash it out . I dont think 36 hours of rain be any worse than 8 hours of rain . if your sewer is the problem it would back up should it rain 60 hours a pipe cant be any more full than full.
perhaps jetting befor rainy season once a year.
question for op what was deciding factor for lining the sewer vs replacing pipe?

The deciding factor was about 7k. We did replace the clean out entirely as it was cracked/smashed. We learned that a previous repair from before we purchased the house had resulted in the worker jamming a four inch pipe up against the cracked six inch pipe and pouring concrete over top to make them stick together. This of course just made an already cracked and smashed pipe even worse.
 

Reach4

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Can you look down your new cleanout, using a bright spotlight, and see how full the sewer is?
Maybe you could make a dipstick to measure how far down/up the water level in the pipe is. If the water in the cleanout rises 6 inches higher than the top of the pipe, the problem with backflowing into your basement is not an obstruction in the upstream 80 ft of pipe.
 

Matthew Ravas

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Maybe you could make a dipstick to measure how far down/up the water level in the pipe is. If the water in the cleanout rises 6 inches higher than the top of the pipe, the problem with backflowing into your basement is not an obstruction in the upstream 80 ft of pipe.

Since replacing the clean out and the pipe to the road, there is almost nothing in the clean out. Before that, there was standing water in it as well.
 

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Since replacing the clean out and the pipe to the road, there is almost nothing in the clean out. Before that, there was standing water in it as well.
You haven't had a really big rain since then, have you? Maybe put water alarm near the drain.

"The Watchdog" water alarm http://www.glentronics.com/water-alarms/ is cheap, and the sensor can be remoted if you can splice the wires on this low power device. Replace the 9 volt battery maybe once per year as prevention. 110 dB, which I presume is dBa. I would avoid one that says "loud" without a number. Readily available.
 

Matthew Ravas

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You haven't had a really big rain since then, have you? Maybe put water alarm near the drain.

"The Watchdog" water alarm http://www.glentronics.com/water-alarms/ is cheap, and the sensor can be remoted if you can splice the wires on this low power device. Replace the 9 volt battery maybe once per year as prevention. 110 dB, which I presume is dBa. I would avoid one that says "loud" without a number. Readily available.

We've had snow, but it hasn't melted. We've had no rain, so nothing to test with. I'll take a look at the alarm. At this point, I'm leaning towards having them backfill the hole from the first repair and reevaluate the need for the second repair.
 

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We've had snow, but it hasn't melted. We've had no rain, so nothing to test with. I'll take a look at the alarm. At this point, I'm leaning towards having them backfill the hole from the first repair and reevaluate the need for the second repair.
Sounds reasonable to me.

The one thing I would recommend is that if the fill-back has much clay, do not have them mound up what is left. Instead, get that carted away.
Then as things settle, add topsoil (not "black dirt"). Grass does not grow on clay.

Had they separated the topsoil as they dug, that would have been best. Most diggers are not the best.
 
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