Just a follow-up with a couple questions to get some more input on the issue?

I e-mailed Steve Fulop about the sewer charging/back-up issue and got a very nice reply (Tom Gibbons was cc-ed). Steve in looking at the issue and mentioned that from the information he was getting, the backups were due to either:
a) Sewer needs cleaning
b) Dated system that can?t handle capacity.

Granted ? I?m no engineer, but I still see this as a capacity/dated system issue. If the system is so delicate that it gets clogged frequently, isn?t that a symptom of a dated capacity/design issue?...

We recently installed a 6? check valve and had our building main scoped/snaked with a video camera feed out to the street main. We wanted to ensure that our building main was fine and had no collapsed portions (it was). The camera had a ?fish-eye? lens, so I?m sure the image was distorted, but when it got the street main, it really appeared that the street main was rectangular in shape and made out of brick. The contractor we hired told us that if our building was approx 150-years old, the sewer was probably put in a couple years before the building.

I?m hoping the check valve does the trick, but I?m concerned that although I may have blocked sewage from backing up my building main, the water in a ?charge? situation still has to go ?somewhere.? Does a check-valve on Building A make it worse for those surrounding buildings that aren?t check-valved?... Say all the buildings on the block were check-valved ? would a sewer back-up make the street flooding worse and possibly raise the ground water levels to where buildings would get foundation leaks?...

A couple other questions for discussion ?
? Has anyone actually viewed the old sewer main at the street? What is its size, shape, etc.?
? If, indeed, the main is rectangular in shape ? is that shape more prone to clogging than a round sewer?

Thoughts?...

Thanks,
Scott (the sewer obsessed)

We?re neighbors of Ben?s and experiencing ?flooding? on our garden level that's due to the sewers backing up. Most recently, this happened twice on Wednesday, 7/6/2005. The second time I was ?lucky? (yeah... right) enough to be downstairs to witness exactly what happens in our particular case.

Some background? our garden level contains two bedrooms; each bedroom has a bathroom with toilet/bathtub/sink.

We got a microburst of rain about 6:00 pm when I was downstairs. The toilet started to bubble, like a roiling boil, as if water was forcing the air up from the trap. I was bouncing back from bathroom to bathroom to see where water got in first. Waste water backs up into the bathtub filling it about 4 inches.

You figure if the pressure in the sewer line is strong enough to fill the tub 4 inches, it must be substantial. The toilet and bathtub are on the same level. I?m sure that equal pressure is on the toilet exhaust.

Now, I?m not toilet engineer, but it makes sense to me that a toilet is built to be relatively watertight ONE WAY on the outbound side. With constant water pressure inbound, the water has to go somewhere. The bathrooms were done when we bought our place, so I can?t say for sure what the floors are like under the bathroom.

What I witnessed was waste water coming up from the bathroom floor!! My suspicion is that water comes up the toilet exhaust, then travels along the subflooring boards and surfaces wherever it?s porous enough (breaks in the grout, around the toilet base, etc.). As soon as the water recedes in the bathtub, the water stops coming up from the floor.

YUCK!....@#%....

Needless to say, we?re in the process of contacting plumbing contractors for different proposals. Somehow it doesn?t seem right that the property owners in town have to pay for outside solutions for something that is so obviously a municipal utility issue.