brownieboy, fred is in colonia, 1 mile off of exit 131 on the parkway.

 

Right now I'm air-chiseling a big rock that's in the way of the new drainpipe. While a lot of work and definitely testing my forearm strength, in an odd way I find it theraputic. Die rock die!

The reason for installing the new drainpipe lower is I can solve two problems at once - replace the clogged gutter drainpipes, and add a much needed drain in the driveway so the water that normally flows nicely down the driveway towards the house can be diverted into this tank as well. I bought a cast-iron "bell drain" which should help reduce the amount of pine needles that get sucked in.

What I'm going to do with the tank is build a wooden form and make a concrete neck to turn the drainpipe into, entering the tank via the angled portion of a "Y". The straight part will stick up to the ground surface with one of those cleanout thread-in caps, giving me access to the tank to pump it out occasionally since it doesn't drain properly and I'm not going to knock it apart to get inside to suck out the goop since it supports my driveway and I like it where it is

I can either setup a temporary pump and disconnect it when not in use, through a cleanout port I'll be added, or permanently install a pump and have if fill a giant french drain I'd have to dig out, possibly with machinery.

Anyway, back to rock chiseling. Took a short break to give my toy compressor the opportunity to cool off a bit.

 

ya know, ya really need to hook that 30 gallon tank to the quincy head ya got.

 

I have to find the quincy head first. It's probably right next to the GV unit

 

Build a wooden buck around the drain, and poured quick-drying high-test cement. I didn't top it off as I wanted to skim over it with a mortar capable of being skimmed thinky and still surviving freeze/thaw cycles for a nice smooth finish.

I did this late morning, and put two saw horses around it to suggest that standing there is a dumb idea.

I checked around 4pm to see if it was dry enough to skim over with the mortar, and what do I find?

The side of the buck knocked out, the cement oozed down the side, the drain cockeyed, and two HUGE footprints right in the middle!

Yes, my mail had arrived.

I'm going to teach a certain someone a new meaning of "going postal" tomorrow at 2:17pm

Of course it was wet when he stepped in it, and now it's hard and cured enough I won't be able to scrape it away. I guess tonight I'll be air chiseling that also.

Grrrrrrrr.

 

Looking at the pictures you posted it looks like everything is to deep in the ground and your probably picking up ground water. Not to mention the fact that everything is old and probably has failed.

I would scrap all of the old pipes!

Do you have pitch to the road with possibly a storm drain in front of your house?

In new construction we are required to install a drainage system for gutters with infiltrators, 1" stone, and then cover the trench with filter fabric. At the end of the leaching system install a high overflow that either daylights, runs downhill to the street, or goes directly into the storm sewer. This way you'll never have to rely on power to remove the water from your house. Unless you live below road level?

Always remember 1/4" per foot pitch min. on pipe for gutters when there's probably debris carried through the pipes also.

 

Fred has no problems with ground water infiltration, as 99% of the pipes are in a clay/shale mix
going to a leaching field is not an option due to the soil composition, a daylight overflow will run into his neighbors cellar, and going to the road is a no go, cause the road is higher than the garage.

so his only solution is to store it in the tank, and then pump it out.

 

The question is "where" to pump it out "to".

My pumping with a garden hose-sized pump into the street resulted in it going around the circle and down the street to a storm drain, but the water flow was very small. If I use a larger pump, I think my neighbor who is at least a foot lower than me, will experience some swamping.

Part of his problem is he has two dry wells in his backyard - one for the sump pumps and one for the underground gutters (front and back), however over the past few years both collapsed and he filled both of them with dirt to the top, then seeded over that to make his backyard usable again.

This leaves his sump pumps and gutters with massive volumes of water with nowhere to go, so the gutters overflow right at the foundation and seep into the basement, and the sump pumps can't remove it.

This is why any heavy rain at all results in 3-4' of standing water in his basement.

On the rare occasions when I drain my inground pool completely, I have to do it in the dryest of days because the outlet is very close to his property which is downhill. If his ground is saturated already with rain water, my pool water ends up flowing across his sloping driveway, into his garage, and down the basement stairs essentially relocating my pool . Since he filled his drywells, he can't get rid of the water very easily.

This is why I'm willing to deal with the occasional hassle of having to pump out this tank. Before I sealed everything up I remeasured it with an ultrasonic tape measure, and got an 11'x11'x9' dimension. I have no idea how accurate it is but safe to say, it's a pretty huge tank, and it sucks to empty it with a garden hose-sized pump. A friend of mine just cut up his above ground pool since his children are in college and the pool hasn't been used in many years, so I offered to take the pump off his hands maybe in trade or something. A pool pump is usually plumbed before the filter so it can take some solids (i.e. rotting dirt from my tank) and it has a nifty little basket to collect solids as well as a somewhat clear cover so I can check on it and make sure it's pumping so it doesn't overheat. Pool pumps cannot be run dry very long as they soften then melt very quickly - the water cools the pump.

Cheap plastic

Being that my sewer line from my house was replaced six years ago and is physically close to the gutters, I seriously considered "elbowing" the gutters into the cleanout that's behind the shrubs.

Then I realized that six other gutters feed the tank and I'd not be addressing water flow from those. Aside it's illegal here to dump rain water into the town sewer. And, with my luck I'll plug up the sewer line to the street and instead of flooding my own basement via seepage from gutter overflow like I had in the past, the toilets and drains would blackflow onto the floor since my gutters are quite a bit higher than these plumbing fixtures.

That's the last thing I need to clean up, 61 years of crusty poop in the pipes that's not mine, flowing down the stairs into the living room.

Routing to the same tank and pumping it out occasionally just seemed like a better option, even if it's not ideal.