Drywell & Seepage Pit Safety

Safety warnings about drywells and seepage pits:

This wastewater drywell article discusses special safety, collapse, and fatality hazards special to drywells (or seepage pits) and gives safety and maintenance advice.

Watch out: Safety Warning: do not walk over the top of or close to the edges of a drywell or any other onsite pit or excavation because of the danger of fatal collapse. Keep pets and children away from such systems.

Drywell and Seepage Pit Safety and Septic System Capacity Warnings

Drywell & Seepage Pit Safety

Photo at left: view into a filled seepage pit.

• Safety Warning: there is a risk of drywell collapse, risking injury and potential fatality if someone falls in to one of these systems, particularly for older site-built systems that were often made of dry-stacked stone or concrete block, and more-so if such systems are not protected by a very secure cover.
  
  Believe it or not, simple wood board covers were often used on home-made drywells. Such covers rot and ultimately collapse.

Drywell & Seepage Pit Capacity and Testing Limitations

• Limited septic system capacity is implied
  
   by the presence of a drywell. Wet soil conditions or limited space for a functioning drain field (for the septic system) often leads property owners to reduce the liquid load on the septic system by routing gray water to a separate drywell.
  
  Where such a system is installed owners/buyers should be alert for these conditions and should expect to face extra costs for system maintenance and repair as well as limited septic system capacity.
• An exception to the septic system capacity warning
  
   above at a large building where a sink or laundry are added in an area distant from piping connected to the septic system, an owner may add a remote drywell as an alternative to inconvenient and costly routing of a drain line from the laundry to the existing septic system.
• Drywells can obscure or prevent effective septic loading and dye testing:
  
  If a drywell system is installed, running water at the fixtures draining into this system (as may be done by some septic tests) are likely to fail to perform a loading test on the septic system even if such a test was attempted.
  
  First, the fixtures where water was run in attempt to test the septic system (tank and leach field) may not even be delivering water to those components if instead the fixtures drain to a separate drywell.
  
  It is critical to trace building drains as part of a septic test or to otherwise try to determine if the test water is actually entering the septic system.
• Even if we're trying to "test the drywell",
  
  if the drywell is "working" at all, it is a large empty hole in the ground. After a period of disuse it may appear to be working during a test but fail in a day or two when the no-longer functioning hole is filled with wastewater.
• Where a drywell is installed at a property and a septic inspection was attempted,
  
  more testing may be in order: in cases where only toilets empty into the septic system, it may be possible to make a more effective septic loading and dye test: put a test water load directly into the toilet by using a garden hose.
  
  This is not a typical/normal septic test procedure and has its own concerns such as overloading a system of unknown design that did not anticipate such volumes and possible back-contamination of water supply via hose in toilet (a cross connection). Whether or not such an additional test is performed, our warning about a system of limited capacity for which the owner may face significant costs to repair or expand capacity remains in effect.

Watch out: Readers trying to diagnose and deal with sudden soil subsidence or yard collapses should see CESSPOOL SAFETY WARNINGS as those hazards can also apply to drywells and septic tanks

Also see SINKHOLES, WARNING SIGNS.

Important additional septic system safety warnings are at SEPTIC & CESSPOOL SAFETY.

What's the law on discharging washing machine water onto the ground?

I would to know the law for waste water running from wash machine on top the ground (Jan 21, 2013) cameron carter

Reply:

Cameron, in most jurisdictions in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and parts of Asia, the discharge of graywater or any building plumbing drain water directly to the ground surface is prohibited. You don't say where you live so I'm left having to advise that you check directly with your local building department.

Interestingly, research on use of graywater shows that it can be beneficial to plants and dry soils.

See GREYWATER SYSTEMS for details.

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Continue reading  at DRYWELLS ARE THEY ACTUALLY DRY? or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.

Or see these

Recommended Articles

• CESSPOOL SAFETY WARNINGS
• DRYWELL DESIGN & USES
  • DRYWELL SAFETY CONCERNS
  • DRYWELLS ARE THEY ACTUALLY DRY?
  • DRYWELL / SEEPAGE PIT SPECIFICATIONS
  • DRYWELL / SEEPAGE PIT CONSTRUCTION DETAILS
  • DRYWELL / SEEPAGE PIT COLLAPSE or FAILURE
• GREYWATER SYSTEMS

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