gibbles

@gibbles

they/them

oh shit there's posts on here?

gibbles @gibbles3/17/2023, 12:30 PM

i like cohost because i feel like enough people with enough varied experiences actually 1. read the cohost global feed tag/s, 2. are willing to reply to posts (esp in stuff they know about) that i can just post random things i'm curious about and might actually get a good answer

anyways last year there was some pretty bad flooding in my area and a lot of people's basements ended up with like, four feet of standing water and really sucked, Thankfully our home already has a sump pump so we just got a few puddles which i'm not going to complain about at all given other ppls situations, BUT

my question is......there's a sewer service access thing in my utility room with a cap i can remove to have an open pipe to the sewer, and i was wondering, in the situation where i had enough standing water in my basement for it to cover up to the sewer cap, would it be a completely awful idea to open it in the hopes that the water would drain out through the sewer?

like, i know next to nothing about plumbing so my guesses are either 1. good ending, it drains the water enough to keep it from building up any more, or 2. bad ending, the sewer backs up and now my filthy filthy floodwater is even nastier now

my instincts tell me not to mess with it but like, i also feel like if i took a bucket and started bailing water into a bathtub that would be fine, and that kind of feels like the same thing to me ? ?? ??

what do you think, plumbing-knowers of cohost

#The Cohost Global Feed #the cohost global yahoo answers

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in reply to @gibbles's post:

Big Mick Energy @possumskull3/17/2023, 12:38 PM

The answer is likely 2. I lived in a place that was missing the caps and it did flood with sewage and wrecked the water heater and furnaces.

Depending on how your area does it, your basement probably has drains which already go to the sewer, either that or a pump.

Additionally, another time the sewer line did back up and needed to by cleared at the vent pipe by the street, but that a DPW's problem and cost us nothing.

@sarksus3/17/2023, 6:02 PM

It really depends but it’s safer to assume #2. If the sewer system is overwhelmed in the area in general then yeah it can back up through that access cap if opened. I’ve had some sewage slowly come up through mine when the cap was not screwed on all the way. There have been situations where I’ve opened the access cap several hours after a flood because there was a pool of water around it, with the pool not getting bigger, and that allowed the water to escape. If the flood is more localized then it might be safer to open the cap but I really don’t have the experience/knowledge to give advice on when it’s safe to open the cap.

Another thing to consider is if the sewer pipe has a backwater valve installed. That would prevent water from entering your basement. I don’t know how to check for the existence of a backwater valve beyond finding out real quick when sewage enters your basement through that pipe.