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Understand how basement waste water systems work, and how you can protect yourself against sewage backups. Part of my online course on finishing basements the right way.
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0:00
In this video, I want to explain something of how basement drain systems can work
0:07
So, here we have a foundation wall, and this is the floor
0:13
It's kind of a cutaway view. Now, there's really two main situations you're going to run into
0:20
and this first one is the floor drain system. So, this is what you're facing when the drain of your floor ultimately is lower than your house
0:33
And you're going to know you've got that situation because you've got a floor drain somewhere in your basement floor
0:41
It'll just be a round, usually perforated disk, about four or five inches in diameter, and it will be a drain
0:51
So, anything, any water that's on the basement floor can be drained down into it
0:56
but it's also connected to something larger and more extensive. So, if you have a modernish sort of basement that hasn't had any plumbing rough-ins to it
1:07
you're going to have a floor drain like you see here, and that's just about it
1:12
All the other things on this drawing don't exist yet, and I want to explain how you can add them and what has to happen
1:21
Now, this isn't a full-blown course on plumbing. That could take up a course all on its own, but it is to give you
1:28
this lesson is to give you an idea of how things go together and what you're going to be up against
1:33
So, starting with the floor drain, the first thing I want to bring your attention to is this thing over here called the backwater valve
1:41
As I've explained in the course, this is a fancy sort of one-way valve
1:47
It lets sewage leave your house, like you see here, but it prevents sewage from coming back up into your house and bubbling right up through the floor drain
2:00
and filling the bottom of your basement with your sewage and other people's sewage too
2:07
Now, this sort of thing happens to thousands of homes each year when municipal sewage systems are overloaded, usually because of a lot of rain
2:15
So, a backwater valve is definitely very cheap insurance. You're going to have to break through the concrete floor or have someone do that to install it
2:26
but it's not as big a deal as it sounds. So, that's thing number one
2:31
Now, let's just say you want to install a bathroom in your basement
2:35
It's very common. You're going to have to tap into this existing line
2:41
So, the floor drain goes down, and under normal circumstances, what you'll find is that it makes a turn, a 90-degree turn, and starts to go horizontally
2:51
and eventually away from your house and down to the main sanitary sewage line
2:58
So, if you want to add a bathroom, you're going to have to add these pipes here
3:04
one leading from a toilet, another from a sink. You're probably going to want to have a shower or a bathtub or something like that
3:11
So, to add these pipes, you're going to have to break up channels through the concrete
3:19
so you can dig down into the soil that's underneath your basement and add these pipes
3:25
They need to be sloped in the right direction and all that usual plumbing stuff
3:29
but the purpose of this video is just to give you an overview of what has to happen
3:33
So, you need to break up the floor, install the pipes in a rough-in sort of way
3:38
so they would end somewhat above the floor, and then these other things would be added later
3:44
Here, there's a flange, a toilet flange, which would be kind of at floor level
3:50
and the toilet would bolt to it, and it would make a sewage connection that would work and keep things contained
3:58
So, I want to bring your attention to something that's easy to miss
4:02
especially if you're doing this sort of plumbing work yourself and you've never done it before
4:06
So, here we have a vanity and sink, and coming out of the bottom of the sink is this
4:13
is what's called a trap, which is a curved section of drain pipe
4:19
and the purpose of that curved section is to retain some water in it
4:25
and that stops any sewer gases from being able to waft up into your home
4:31
The water acts as a kind of a seal, and it keeps those sewer gases out
4:37
So, we've got a situation here, the sink has tapped into the main drain
4:41
the toilet's tapped into the main drain, and imagine you're flushing the toilet
4:46
So, there's this big blast of water that goes down the pipe, traveling this way
4:52
There's a fair amount of force to this because water weighs a lot
4:56
and it is going downhill a little bit in this pipe, but eventually that big blast of water stops
5:03
and there's just air behind it when the toilet has finished flushing
5:08
and the tank is filling and whatnot. So, behind the big blast of water, as it travels down
5:15
there's going to be a tremendous amount of suction built up. It's creating a vacuum, the water's creating a vacuum as it moves down along the pipe
5:26
And let's just say that vacuum continues here, past the point where a sink or shower might connect to that system
5:38
Well, the suction is going to want to draw all the water out of the trap
5:44
because it's sucking on these pipes as the water travels down. And if this situation, the setup you see here, existed without this vent that you see drawn here
5:58
then two things are going to happen. First of all, most of the water is going to be sucked out of the trap
6:04
which means the trap's not functioning properly anymore. It doesn't have enough water in it to seal out the sewer gases
6:11
There might be a little bit of water left in the bottom of the trap, but if there's a continuous pathway with no water in it through here
6:19
then you're going to get sewer gases wafting up here, making your basement bathroom smell bad
6:24
The rush of the toilet water is also going to cause a kind of a glug-glug sound
6:32
as it tries to suck the water out of the trap. I should mention, too, that this isn't just a function of toilets
6:38
This is anything that empties into a drain. When that water, when that section of water is flowing down here
6:46
and there's no other water behind it, it creates a powerful suction
6:50
So this could be a bathtub or another sink or a toilet like you see here
6:54
So the solution to this suction problem in the world of plumbing
6:59
is to install some sort of a vent. So the vent allows air to be drawn into the system
7:08
So in this case, the suction doesn't ever get to the water in the trap
7:14
It just, the suction is satisfied by air being pulled into this vent
7:21
Now normally, these vents extend all the way up through the house
7:27
and they go through the roof. That's why on most houses you see these pipes
7:33
maybe a foot or two long, not too big in diameter, and they're just sticking up above the roof and they're open on top
7:40
And that's the vent. That's the kind of standard style vent. But if you're working in a basement, getting a vent pipe
7:48
all the way up through your house so that it doesn't interfere with things
7:52
that are going on in your house, room layouts, whatever, and it goes through your attic and it has to go through your roof
8:00
with all the appropriate flashing and waterproofing required, that's a really big hassle
8:05
So this device here, an under-sink vent, is the solution. It's a one-way valve. It's a one-way air valve essentially
8:14
So air can flow into this, but sewer gases and other stuff can't get out
8:24
It only allows flow one way. Now where you live, there may be varying regulations
8:30
on how you need to use these things or how many of them you can use in a given installation
8:36
I'll leave you to figure that out on your own, what the local conditions are
8:41
But this sort of thing is a real lifesaver. It makes the job of plumbing properly a lot easier
8:50
when it comes to the venting. Now would this vent here, as I've drawn it
8:57
be enough to stop the water from being sucked out of the toilet
9:02
Because the toilet is essentially one big trap. I mean, it is a bowl, but the passages
9:08
they take a kind of a curved route. And the water in the toilet also as it lays in there
9:15
helps to seal out the sewer gases. So you want to have a vent like this
9:21
maybe within three or four feet of where the toilet connects and as close as possible to the sink as well
9:30
If it's too far away from the item in question, then the suction is going to build sufficiently
9:38
to cause some problems before that suction ever gets a chance to be relieved by the vent
9:45
whatever kind of vent that is. So there are regulations about how close the vent has to be
9:52
to the item in order to vent properly. And you're going to want to look those up
9:57
As I said, this isn't a detailed lesson on how to do plumbing
10:01
because that's a job in itself, but this is just to give you an overview
10:05
of how the drain business is done in basements and the kind of challenge that you're likely to face
10:12
with a venting way down there. Although most basements have drains in the floor
10:19
and the drain leaves the building below the bottom of the basement floor, not all homes are like this
10:24
Some homes have a drain pipe, a main drain pipe, that leaves through the wall partway up the wall
10:31
like you see here. And in situations like this, you can't rely on gravity
10:37
to get rid of the sewage that you're going to generate in the basement. For that, you need a system that's got some sort of a pump
10:45
And that's what I've pictured here. Let's start by looking at this
10:50
This is a macerating toilet. I call it a Santa Flo toilet
10:55
because Santa Flo is the world leader in this sort of thing
10:59
Imagine a regular toilet. It's got water in it, and it's porcelain
11:03
and it's got a seat. But when you flush it, the waste water doesn't go down
11:10
through some large diameter pipe, like 3 or 4 inches in diameter
11:14
Instead, the sewage goes into another part of the unit, which is the sewage pump
11:21
In this case, the toilet also grinds things up. So it's not just going to pump it up and out
11:32
into your main drain that's above the floor, but it's also going to grind it up
11:37
That's where the word macerating comes from. Now, this sort of a setup does take a little bit of electricity
11:45
You're going to need a 120-volt outlet somewhere to operate this sewage pump
11:50
But the good news is that you only need to connect a 3-quarter inch diameter pipe to the sewage pump
11:58
because everything's all chewed up. A pipe that small is going to do the job for you
12:04
So that's part one of the arrangement. But let's say you want a shower or some sort of a vanity sink
12:12
You're also going to need to get that water up high enough
12:16
so it goes down to the main drain. Now, these Santa Flow toilets come in different models
12:21
but there are models that are meant to handle more than just the sewage produced by the toilet
12:27
And that's what we have going on here. So if we're dealing with a concrete floor
12:33
and the sewage pump and toilet are as low as it can be
12:37
if you're going to go with a shower or a sink, you need to raise that a little bit
12:42
perhaps on some sort of a false floor or just to raise the shower itself
12:47
because you're going to need to have room for the drain to go down
12:52
and then to curve and travel horizontally. And in this case, it's the same old 3-quarter inch pipe
12:59
that we were talking about before. But that pipe does need to be sloped a little bit
13:05
so that it flows with gravity because it's going to flow this way
13:11
and it's going to go into the sewage pump as well. So whenever someone's taking a shower or using the sink
13:18
or flushing the toilet, then the sewage pump will detect that and it will kick on
13:24
It will chew up everything or attempt to chew up everything that goes through it and then pump this stuff up and out
13:32
So this is the way it works. You're going to want to arrange things in your basement
13:38
so that this 3-quarter inch pipe, if it has to drain anything else other than the toilet
13:44
you're going to want to locate that pipe along the wall somewhere so it's out of sight
13:49
Maybe even behind something. Maybe this pipe would travel horizontally through a utility part of your basement
13:59
maybe where the furnace is or something like that, and then pop back into the bathroom
14:04
your basement bathroom, when it connects to the sewage pump. You're going to need to be a bit creative
14:09
about how to work this and lay it out so that it works as well as possible
14:14
You're also going to need to do some fooling around here to see how high you have to raise the base
14:19
so that you have room to get the pipe in and for it to go horizontally
14:24
You're going to want to make this raised area accessible too because, who knows
14:28
someone might need to get in there someday. So as much as possible, you're going to want to leave it accessible
14:34
That's really the only way that you can get any kind of sewage to drain away in a basement
14:41
where the outlet is partway up the wall like this. Now, most of the times
14:47
this is going to happen in rural areas, in my experience, because if you're in a city
14:52
in any kind of a subdivision, the whole shebang is laid out
14:56
so that the drains can exist below the houses. But many times, if you have a septic system
15:04
the septic tank can only be so far below the ground for it to remain accessible
15:09
which means that this pipe, the height of this pipe, is kind of predetermined in a way
15:17
because it's got to be just a little bit higher than the septic tank
15:22
So this sort of an arrangement here with the wall drain is something that I think you'll find in rural areas
15:29
where there is no municipal sewage system. But no matter where you find it
15:34
you can solve the problem with one of these macerating toilets that also handles other wastewater
#Bathroom
#Home Improvement
#Plumbing