pethier@isd.net wrote:
> Any drain attached to the sanitary sewer system has a trap. Your floor
> drain in your basement has a trap. Your sink has a trap. Your toilet IS a
> trap.
First of all, you aren't likely to get approval to connect a garage
floor drain to a sanitary sewer.
Anyways, I have a drain in my garage, and it does smell sometimes.
Sometimes it's from using it not often enough, sometimes it's using it
too often. This summer it acted up when I was testing some outboard
motors in a garbage can and was pouring hundreds of liters of water down
there every couple of days.
I guess all that fresh water was a nice place to live for whatever
was already in there, and it got really gross. Either that, or whatever
was living in there was killed by all the two-stroke oil residue. But it
certainly wasn't "trap gone dry".
Nothing a half bottle of bleach won't fix though, but it's nasty and
it's a problem that comes and goes.
> I often get calls from homeowners complaining about the sewer smell in the
> basement. I ask if they have been putting water in the floor drain
> occasionally. The answer is usually "no".
Around here the code is to have a bleed line off the basement sink.
So as long as you use the sink occasonally, it solves itself.
You might consider the same thing in your garage if you have a sink,
a little bleed line and it'll keep the water fresh and the trap full. I
have a sink in my garage as well but it's drained a lot of the year for
freezing reasons.
The previous owner heated the garage year round, which made for some
pretty interesting "estimate-based" gas bills when I moved in. My
consumption went down to half in the winter months, so I actually got
refunds twice after they realized the estimates I had been paying were
ridiculous.
--
Trevor Boicey, P. Eng.
Ottawa, Canada, tboicey@brit.ca
ICQ #17432933 http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/
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