Washing Machine Drain Line Options

[lrunge]

When I bought my 100+ year old house I remodeled the kitchen. Of course my wife wanted the garbage disposal and dishwasher so I installed them. Several months later in trying to figure out why the ground was so wet in an area of my yard I discovered the kitchen sink and clothes washer were hooked to a grey water line. The garbage disposal had filled up the old clay pipe. I had to dig it up and re-route and attach it to the sewer line.

 

[slowrev]

Phosphates....

 

[MossRoad]

Yeah, the guy that owned our house before us did that, only with a horse trough burried upside down. Guess how I found it... /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

Here's a link to a picture of a full length shovel handle laying in the end. The shovel head is under the end that didn't collapse. That was a few years ago. The hole was dry as a bone, so I just filled it in.

3-4 weeks ago I see another hole opening up in the yard. I poke a stick in it and it goes down 5' and comes out wet. This time it was a 55 gallon drum. The lid rotted away and collapsed. I had a large concrete slab that I placed over it, then covered with two feet of dirt after I cleaned out the drum from all the topsoil that fell in it. While I'm cleaning it out, water starts pouring in from the side. I forgot to tell the wife what I was doing and she started laundry. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif More dirt in the hole and more clean out.

My advice to you is use a plastic drum if you are going to do this. It won't rot away. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[DaMadman]

couple things I was going to mention was either use a plastic drum or make sure you fill the metal one really well with gravel so you do not end up with a sink hole when the metal rusts away.

The second thing was about the detergent on the grass. There is a guy on TV that explains why detergent is good for grass and other plants. He makes a mixture of dish soap, beer, soda, and puts it in a hose end prayer and sprays his lawn. The soap cleans off the leaves or grass blades to allow photosynthesis take place more rapidly, the yeast in the beer does something to the thatch in the lawn and the sugar in the soda also reacts in someway to breakl down the thatch and turn it in to fertilizer.

 

[Highbeam]

Yep slowrev got it. The detergent is loaded with phosphurus in the form of phosphates. Phosphurus is one of the three numbers in fertilizer. Our lakes and rivers are phosphurus limited so that as soon as you add phospurus you have enough of the other ingredients to support a fabulous algae bloom. The soap "fertilizes" the water body.

In recent decades an effort has been made to produce low-phosphate soaps and detergents to fix this.

For trivia, the oceans are nitrogen limited and where a big nitrogen source dumps into the ocean, like say the nitrate discharge of poorly operating sewage systems there can be huge algae blooms.

 

[MMM]

Hey highbeam, I was shopping and saw couple of 500C drive parts on Ebay. See a lot of TD stuff usually, but not much for that machine and thought you might take interest.

 

[Highbeam]

I'm getting ready to sell it within the next month or two. I haven't really broken anything yet that I couldn't take care of so it is basicly a clean up and checkup before selling.

 

[Moon]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( The detergent is loaded with phosphurus in the form of phosphates. Phosphurus is one of the three numbers in fertilizer. )</font>

Ahhh. Somehow I thought soapy water killed grass. So after washing our vehicles I'd always throw the soapy water onto grass in our gravel driveway in hopes of killing it. No wonder that plan has not worked! /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[OkeeDon]

Dang it, Moon, it hurts when I laugh. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[Highbeam]

The econazis here in the NW actually encourage you to park on the lawn to wash your car to allow a reuse of the washwater and prevent the washwater from heading down the line.