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I have a house built with a “slab” construction. We are moving the washer and dryer to a location in the house that is nowhere near the soil stack. I plan on running the washer’s waste water out the back of the house into a drywell.
How big does the drywell need to be (diameter and depth) to adequately drain? I’m assuming that we would never run the washer more than twice a day – but that is two wash and two rinse cycles…
Do I need to use a 50 gallon drum, or can I just fill the hole with the coarse stone? I live in Connecticut, so the soil is a mixture of clay and rocks.
Thanks for all of you help, in advance!
-Keith
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Check your local plumbing code first - many states, like here in WI, all sewage, including grey water, must go into the septic system or municipal sewage piping. An alternative for you might be to dump the washer into a small tank with an ejector pump and pipe it overhead through the attic until you can get close to location where you can connect to your existing drain lines. In the long run, it would be cheaper and less work than digging a hole and constructing a dry well, with the added benefit of being sure it's code compliant.
*A 3 bedroom house I owned about 10 years ago had the washer greywater disposal system that you describe. The county health dept. required the previous owners to install it to co. specs in order to sell the house to us.I'm kind of hazy on the size of the pit, but it was about 10' deep by 8' x 8'. It was filled with 1" washed gravel (clay in the area where the house was located). Also, the system included a grease trap which was basically like a small precast concrete septic tank, about 3' in diameter, and about 2' deep, with an ~2" inlet and a 3" outlet with a tee connector on it. The grease trap was located about 12' from the house, and then the pit was about another 30' out. I think the pit contained a perforated plastic barrel that helped disperse the waste water out into the pit.