Discharging gray water to back alley

[Kathy]

I've been following this thread with interest because in the neighborhood that I live in, there are more than a couple houses that I know of that discharge laundry water and sump pump discharge into the street. The municipality won't stop it because they are the same people that won't make city-sewer available to this area of town. It's such an old neighborhood that some of the homes don't even have a septic "system", just a cesspool. The neighborhood was built as a seasonal escape from the city so a cesspool under an outhouse wasn't a problem. In fact indoor plumbing came after the oldest remaining homes had been built. After my house had been built circa

1927. City water was made available in the 70's after a few wells got contaminated by the septic fields. You see, the area is also clay marl. It never drained well and as the years went by it just got worse. You can no longer get a permit for a septic systm around here so unless you are willing to pay about 30k, not including the plumbing between your house and the drainline, to hook up to the nearest sewer main(which happens to be private) you are shit out of luck. How ironic. My septic has been fine for the 14 years I've been here but there are times of year when the water table gets so high that the septic field won't drain entirely and stays soggy. And my laundry water drains into a brick lined drywell. So a few families draining laundry water into the street and storm drains gets overlooked. We had an association about 10 years ago and tried to get something done about the problem but the lawyers ate up the funds faster than we could raise them. We got know by the local press as the "sewer people" and never made any headway. Christie Whitman eased the wetlands regulations quite a bit and the DEPE got soft. You can't even get them to enforce ther own rules. Oh, and BTW, the fine for cutting down a tree in a wetlands area is $250. and you don't even have to replace the tree. What a joke. This whole f****ng state is a joke.

[meirman]

In alt.home.repair on Sun, 27 Feb 2005 19:39:49 -0600 [e-mail] (lp13-30) posted:

Sounds like the same model. My mother picked it out. Washer and dryer, both pink. Few or no lights though. Had it for 9 years in Indianapolis and another 10 in Allentown. Sold them for 50 dollars each when she moved to a place with not enough space. They were good as new. (Except when they moved to Pa. from Ind., they had to unload the moving van in Ohio. A trucker's strike had just started in Pa. and the truckers were shooting at non-union drivers. After the strike they reloaded my mother's stuff, and bashed in one rear to corner of the dryer.)

I later had an old whirlpool, but didn't use it often enough, and the main bearing holding the basket rusted shut. For one reason or another I probably went a month or two once without using it. If I had used it more often, would have lasted 10 more years.

Meirman

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[meirman]

In alt.home.repair on Sun, 27 Feb 2005 13:26:01 GMT "Edwin Pawlowski" posted:

We only had a single tub, and I guess I didn't say it but the rinse water drained out through that tube, surrounded by the wash water in the same tub. When I was 10 this was very impressive.

Yeah.

Off topic from the off-topic, but in NYC for quite a few years around the turn of the century, 1900, it was illegal to take a bath. Because it was so much effort to heat the water on the stove, more than one person would bath in the same water, and it spread diseases. (They would hang the tub outside the kitchen window, between the buildings, when not using it.)

I guess if you had a hot water heater connected to a real tub, baths were not illegal, but people from the tenements were expected to go to the public baths, which I think were showers.

They still sell that pulley. I mention this because for some reason I have one, but I can't return it since i don't have the receipt and don't remember where I bought it. :(

My mother dried clothes outside until 1966, but we had a yard. And wooden clothespoles to hold up the clothesline. For 10 years in Brooklyn I had a washing machine, 2 consecutive ones that I found in the trash on the street, both easy to repair. But I never found a drier, so I dried my clothes on the shower bar. Cotton/polyester dries very quickly. Towels take a whole day, and come out stiff, but the stiffness goes away the first time they're used.

Meirman

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[meirman]

In alt.home.repair on Sun, 27 Feb 2005 07:55:24 -0700 "" posted:

When they built the reservoirs around Baltimore, maybe in the 50's through 70's, the engineer wanted a pipe from the Susquehanna river 30 or 40 miles away. They built it in the 70's, I think it was, but didn't use it until about 1998 and the following year, when it really came in handy. The reservoirs were close to empty and I think we would not have had enough water without that pipe.

The guy who wanted it was still alive to see it used. That's good because I'm sure he had gotten a lot of flak about wasting city money.

In Israel, they take the sewage from Tel Aviv and around there, from toilets, etc. and pipe it down to Beersheva and futher south to water the crops with. Even though they use computerized drip irrigation, they are still short of water.

Meirman

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[The Real Tom]

Very Good point, I never investigated water shed issues, since I believe I do not live in one.

later,

tom @

[Matt]

Who the f*ck died and made you protector of the world, you snivelling little bitch?

Your best bet is to continue growing your kiddie p*rn collection, and staying out of the advice giving business, dickhEaD.

[Goedjn]

There are two definitions of "watershed" in the US; one of them is the area that drains into a specific body of water, (usually a river). The other is wrong. But the word is used as a synonym for "divide", as in "the Great Divide", which (again, in the US) names the border between the pacific watershed and the atlantic.

If your house is build on the ground, you live on a watershed.

--Goedjn

[Kathy]

Family ties.

[Greg]

[Dan C]

Well, if it sucks as bad as you say, maybe it's time to cut the apron strings? Where would we be if everyone thought that way, back in the Wild West days...? Don't be scared.

[The Real Tom]

I wish I was wrong, I just can't find the email. When I moved here(my house in pa) in 2002 we had a slight drought conditions. That is when I remember firing off the email. I can't find the email, but I remember it did reference specific articles, and the lady told me about some grey water having higher bacteria concentrations than some black water sources.

I'll look, might be in another account.

later,

tom

[Kathy]

Fuck you and apron strings. I stay in Jersey to look after my aging parents. Back in the "Wild West" they would be dead by this age and I wouldn't be in Jersey. The only thing that frightens me is them going into the care of the state. You're stupider sounding than Matt.

[ioc]

Hmmmmmm... I'm not saying your wrong... but I would like to see the regulation that refers to gray water as human waste in PA. It is my understanding that it is (or was about 10 years ago) perfectly acceptable in PA (unless superceded by local codes) to discharge gray water at least (IIRC) 75 feet from any well and (IIRC) 25 feet from any septic tank and at least (IIRC)100 feet from property lines when on a property exceeding 10 acres. I may not remember the distances any more, but I sure do remember having to draw up a map showing exactly how far it was to all of these.

I might be wrong... but I don't think so as this was standard practice and policy out here in the country. And if that were re-written... what would they do when probably 3/4 of the farms in PA (and there are a lot) use gray water discharge? I just read a whole bunch of stuff about the CleanWays deal where they are going to look at us for where fertilizer and oils and such are stored in relation to streams and run-off (and that's a *good* thing) but I've never heard that they call gray water human waste in any regulation here. In fact... there is so much clay here that makes perking difficult that they almost discouraged putting the whole deal in the septic years ago, although they now just won't issue any permits if perks aren't good.

This sounds like a local suburban/urban code as opposed to a state regulation to me, but I certainly would be interested in seeing the actual codes and dates enacted... and know how the hell they would go about forcing

3/4 of rural PA to change.

[Harry Everhart]

A divide is the line that separates two watersheds.

The great divide separates the "pacific" watershed from the "atlantic" watershed.

One time I peed on the great divide and half of the pee went west and half went east :-)

[The Real Tom]

I still can't find the orginal email, but found some pa code, about laundry discharge:

(look for "laundry wastes")

(look for "laundry water")

graywater laundering as sanitary sewage)

(not code but look at the comment about "graywater is just as significant as a pollutant source as blackwater") Might have been supplied with the same professional comment about graywater I was.

hth,

tom

[The Real Tom]

Maybe

look for wash water

hth,

tom @

[Joseph Meehan]

I believe that may be Gulf ?

[Duane Bozarth]

...

...

The Gulf (I assume you mean of Mexico) is attached to the Atlantic, not the Pacific... :)

[The Real Tom]

Baja?

[PaPaPeng]

Except during a prolonged drought when the watering of gardens is banned. There is no way they can tell if its potable water or gray water and they are not about to send out a inspector to check. Therefore if your lawn looks refreshingly green because you had been using gray water, watering is watering and you get fined for violating the ban.