Bad Drains; and How to Test Them / With notes on the ventilation of sewers, drains, and sanitary fittings, and the origin and transmission of zymotic disease

by R. Harris Reeves

It is impossible for the engineer, or clerk of works, to see the whole of the work done, and the result is that a large quantity of bricks which form the sewer are not properly bedded. Liquid sewage finds its way through the joints of the brickwork and percolates through the soil, in some cases to a very considerable distance, contaminating the water it mixes with on its course, and oftentimes it forms a putrid mass under the basement of buildings which happen to be of a lower level than the sewers. To prevent this, a clause should be inserted in the contract that each length of drain or sewer should be tested by atmospheric pressure, say 5 lb. to a square inch.

The top of the sewer should be as tight as the bottom to prevent any gas escaping through the sandy soil or rubble which may be filled in around the sewers or drains.

Leaky sewers and badly-jointed pipes under the soil should never be allowed, yet the danger is not so great in them as in those pipes laid above the ground. Joints to these pipes so often leak that without testing them thoroughly when laid, one leaky joint would cause an unpleasant odour in a building for years without its source being discovered. The reason of this is, that the current of air passes through buildings in a thousand different ways. I have known a sickly odour to come from a cupboard on the first floor of the wing of a building some 60 feet from any soil-pipe or grating; one case in particular, that of a nursery cupboard. This occurred through a leaky soil-pipe from the closet in the basement of the building.

From the planning of the building the chimney near the cupboard had the greatest draught of air in the house, and the air which supplied this chimney came principally from the basement. The sewer gas from the leaky joint, being of a heavier gravity than the atmosphere of the house, was carried along the floor unobserved to this particular room, filling at night, when the fire was not burning, this cupboard, which contained linen, and this held the impurities given off from the leaky joint in the pipe.

Many cases of a similar nature could be mentioned, where families will never recover the loss sustained by them through similar leaky joints in the soil-pipes.

Insufficient fall to sewers does not often occur in those laid under the supervision of engineers, but it is in the branch drains connected to them where so many blunders are made. Oftentimes one part of a drain is laid almost level, whilst another part is laid with a steep gradient. This facilitates the choking of drains, and the siphoning of traps.

Some persons lay drains from houses to the main sewer or to branch drains which are altogether out of proportion to the work they have to do.

The smaller the drain is kept the better, but the diameter should be regulated according to the quantity of water and soil flowing into it, taking into consideration the possibility of additional inlets being added.

The best plan is to collect the number of inlets or supplies to the drain, compare them with the gradient to which they are laid, and put in a drain which, if all the inlets are supplying water at the same time, would not fill more than nine-tenths of its area.

In some cases I have seen a 9-inch drain laid from a house having only two closets, sink and bath outlet attached. If the whole of these were used at the same time, the area of the flow into the drain would only be 7·696 inches, but in the 9-inch drain the area would be 63·617 inches, or nearly nine times the size required to carry off the water and soil.