So, I got myself a water softener, and I thought I could just run the drain line to a drain opening on the side of the house. But that won’t work for two reasons: 1, because that opening is, I think, a cleanout, and when the plug is removed leaks a bit of water. 2, I need an air gap between the softener outflow and the drain so that if the sewer backs up, I don’t get sewage into my water softener.
So, I looked under the house, and there’s an obvious main sewer line running across the crawlspace. It’s black plastic, a couple inches in diameter.
I think all I need to do is cut a section out, put a Y connector in, run a length of pipe horizontally to the edge of the house outside (there’s a vent right about where I want it to come out), put a trap in, and poke a section of pipe up the exterior wall a few feet, then attach the water softener outflow above it.
But I can’t actually find an example of this type of drain online. This seems pretty simple to me, but my wife thinks we should just call a plumber. I say nonsense, we didn’t buy a house so we could hire people to fix it.
Am I missing something here? Is this a job I can do myself?
Maybe use a check-valve … so water can only flow one way from the softener to the sewer but not the other way around … then after you call the plumber, buy a dozen roses and tell your wife she was right and you were wrong …
It can be tricky to install a plumbing connector in the middle of an existing pipe, because while you can probably wiggle the pipe aside enough to get one end of the connector in place, there’s often no way to move the pipe longitudinally far enough to get the other end in place. One solution is to use a Mission coupling. If your line is black plastic, it’s probably ABS. Get an ABS connector and use ABS cement to attach it to one side of your line after you cut out the appropriate sized section, then use a mission coupling to connect the other side. A check valve should not be necessary if it’s done right (that is, the waste water should be flowing downhill everywhere).
Ah, yes. Most stuff I found online suggested using two mission couplings, since it’s just easier than trying to cut things so close to the right length.
First thing is to establish what you can and can not do. Local codes dictate how water treatment discharge can be handled.
If your location is still Santa Barbara, it appears you can discharge into sewer but can not discharge into a on site disposal system(septic). If you are on septic you’d need to look into alternatives such as disposal above ground or into a dry-well.
Check valves are not acceptable back-flow protection, water on each side of a check valve can come into contact with each other allowing bacteria to progress up stream(yes bacteria can travel upstream). Back-flow preventors typically use 2 check valves with vacuum break between to prevent upstream travel.
In any case it doesn’t matter here. Santa Barbara code says you must have an air gap between the discharge and the sewer.
In order to have an air gap you need a trap otherwise sewer gasses come through the air gap.
In order for a trap to work you need proper venting after the trap.
Your plan sounds like it will work. I’m not a plumber and I have not seen your actual set up. It could also be disastrous if what you think is a vent isn’t and/or the trap is tied in to low in the system, in which case every time you ran water it would come out your new drain.
Rather than risk screwing things up, your wife might be right on that one.
An easier DIY route is if you have a washing machine, just run the softener discharge to that and terminate it just above the drain, problem solved drain already plumbed in, has air gap. You can also get a specific air gap fitting for various configurations if splashing is an issue. The softener discharges under pressure thus can handle discharging into a drain on an upper floor.
Tell me more about this. Presumably, the vent needs to run up to above the house, which seems complicated. Or (probably) I need to find an existing vent that goes up and attach to that one?
I mean, I realize I could screw this up, but making sure the trap is higher than the main sewer line isn’t exactly rocket science.
Unfortunately, the spot for the water softener is outside the house, and the washing machine is inside, on an interior wall. So, it would take considerably more work to get the softener to drain there.
Not quite. Drain pipes under 2-1/2" have to be sloped 1/4" per foot in the direction of flow.
BTW, if you are looking for examples, google “drain standpipe”.
Thank you. This is exactly the sort of info that I need.
So, for the vent, I found one source stating that I need to insert a T in the drain line downstream of the trap, with a few inches of pipe pointed up. I get that there needs to be a way for gas to escape, but I’m confused about a few things:
The point of the trap is to keep sewer gasses from coming up out of the drain. If the vent is under the house, they’ll just come out under the house. Which seems bad.
If the vent is just an open pipe pointing up a few inches, that’s going to be lower than the top of the standpipe. Which seems to mostly obviate the need for an airgap, because if the sewer backs up, it’ll just overflow at the vent, not the standpipe.
This makes me think that I don’t understand how a vent that doesn’t go all the way up above the house would work effectively.
Yes. Sanitary vents need to terminate outdoors. What you described sounds like a vent for an indirect drain such as a air conditioner condensate line, which doesn’t apply here.
Since it sounds like you are going to run the drain line to an outside location (probably right next to the house?) you could probably run the vent outside also. You could also consider an air admittance vent, but these also have to terminate at least 4 inches above the drain level. But it could also be installed outside and would prevent sewer gas from escaping from the vent if you didn’t run it above your roofline.
Yes, the water softener is outdoors, right next to the house, so that’s where I’d want to put the drain.
I think I see. I need a way for air to get into the line after the trap because otherwise the draining water will pull all the water out of the trap and the trap won’t block sewer gas from escaping.
But I (maybe) don’t need a way for sewer gas to be vented on this drain as long as there’s another vent somewhere near enough that it can escape.
And the admittance vent needs to be higher than the drain so that if the sewer backs up it comes out the drain, and not out the vent.
The point of a vent isn’t to allow sewer gas to escape, but to allow air into the drain system to prevent the trap fron siphoning dry. That being said, do water softeners drain a small amount continuously, or a large amount at once? If the former, you might get away with an unvented trap. If the latter, you definitely need the vent.
Edit: using the unvented trap assumes that the drain line you are connecting to is properly vented and has a vent connection nearby.
Isn’t it both? Or else you could just have one way air intake valves everywhere. But code says that some vents have to go up to the roof.
A large amount (about 70 gallons in my case) all at once. About once a week, it cycles some really salty water in, then pumps it out and down the drain.