shop-talk
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Crazy idea that will work!

To: pethier@isd.net
Subject: Re: Crazy idea that will work!
From: Trevor Boicey <tboicey@brit.ca>
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:47:38 -0500
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/






<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>