It's Happening Today

[cabinetman]

We hired a plumbing contractor to do our sewer hookup. We got estimates from 5 different ones and the last estimate the guy had a totally different approach. The septic tank has to be pumped out and the bottom broken out, and filled. On the other side of the house, our wash machine drain has to be piped in to the new sewer line. The first four estimates specified trenching the wash machine to the front of the house and diagonally trenching across the yard to the sewer line on the other side of the house.

The last guy decided he would trench to the rear of the house, go around the patio and tap into the line that goes to the other side. He said it was a shorter run and he wouldn't have to tear up the front yard and gravel driveway. Besides that, he didn't ask for a deposit. There was a $1000 impact fee we had to pay the City to tap in, and instead of me having to go down to pay that, he had from memory, the clerks name and direct phone # to call and just pay it by credit card. He is also getting the permits.

Wouldn't guess that the last estimate was the most convenient. I was actually contemplating doing this myself. LOML said "No way". Here's some quickie pics:

This is where they uncovered the septic tank.
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This is the trench they're diggin across the back yard.
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This is the trench for the wash machine drain to the back yard.
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[scmhogg]

Cab,

I've heard of sandy soil...

Looks to me like the ocean has visited your lot before. I hope it never comes back.

Steve

[Otter]

Cab,

I've heard of sandy soil...

Looks to me like the ocean has visited your lot before. I hope it never comes back.

Steve

It's FL, just a great big sand bar....lived there for years....

[cabinetman]

Cab,

I've heard of sandy soil...

Looks to me like the ocean has visited your lot before. I hope it never comes back.

Steve

It's actually pretty good. We never have standing water, as it drains fast. I have to make extra large post holes and rig the bottoms of posts with cross rebar to get a good hold in cement. Even after about 8 years, none of them have loosened up.

Considering our weather, even with the possibilities of hurricanes, I guess it beats cold snowy climates, or living with quakes or El Niño.
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[OpaDC]

Even up in this part of the state it's sandy,although not a sandy as south, which is why we can get 3" of rain in one hour and not get any flooding. Afternoon thunderstorm can give you 1"+ in 15 minutes. 15 minutes later you don't even notice it. But you really have to amend the soil for gardens, be it vegetable or flower. Really makes digging a whole lot easier though. Never get compacted ground. When I was stationed in North Dakota I was amazed at how I could barely dig down 4" without a hammer and chisel.

[BobSch]

...When I was stationed in North Dakota I was amazed at how I could barely dig down 4" without a hammer and chisel.

Our area is all clay and diging is a cast iron b**ch. The biggest problem we've had, besides standing water, is all our tree roots are right at the surface.

Post holes are tough to dig, but once you've got the post in, they're not going ANYWHERE.

[cgallery]

So the waste will exit the back of the house, go around the patio, then along the side of the house, out to the street? Am I correct in describing how that is being done?

And what did the other guys propose?

[cabinetman]

So the waste will exit the back of the house, go around the patio, then along the side of the house, out to the street? Am I correct in describing how that is being done?

And what did the other guys propose?

The waste line exits the center of the rear of the house, and they took it to the side and out to the front. The wash machine line (no waste) comes from the other side of the house and gets tapped into the waste line at the back of the house.

The other guys wanted to run the washer line solo to the front of the house and diagonally cross the whole front yard and join the waste line.
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[gjat]

Digging in Florida isn't always a breeze. We've got hard pan, marl, limerock, and granite, in all sorts of configurations. Near Naples and Fort Myers, they have to blast for large excavations. In Key West, the soil is as much 'quarried' as it is dug, which is why Hemingway had a swimming pool. What was taken out was used as block. Then imagine hitting water most places at 5'.

[Tom Slick]

If my local gov't ever pulls their head out of their..... I'll be doing the same project-hooking into municipal sewer.
My washer is on a seperate grey water system that dumps directly into the leach field.

I also live on a sand dune, but my sand is black and super fine.

[scmhogg]

Here in Simi Valley we have hard clay or adobe. It is very dense. The comment about Hemingway's pool sounded very familiar. Our lot is cut into a hill. Below a thin layer of topsoil is solid rock. Sandstone and shale. When I had my pool dug, they were out there for a week with the jackhammer attachment on the Bobcat. Every day they wanted more money. We stopped with the pool at 6' deep rather than 8'.

I stopped complaining in 1994. We are a few miles from the Northridge earthquake epicenter. We suffered limited damage. Houses built on fill a block away were a total loss.

Steve

[Ed62]

Florida isn't the only place that has sand. Years ago where I live now, used to be a beach on Lake Michigan. If you don't have sand here, somebody brought something else in. Not far south, they have clay.

Ed

[cabinetman]

If my local gov't ever pulls their head out of their..... I'll be doing the same project-hooking into municipal sewer.
My washer is on a seperate grey water system that dumps directly into the leach field.

I also live on a sand dune, but my sand is black and super fine.

That's the way ours was. Back in the 50's and 60's washer drains were either in a drain field, or buried barrels. With the local codes, they aren't allowing that. If my washer was drained to the same line that went to the septic tank I wouldn't have had to run a new line to connect to the sewer.
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