Don’t know how common this is but in my community the city does a smoke test to see if storm drain water is being piped into the sewer resulting in overloading the system
Apparently they go into a neighborhood and introduce smoke into the sewer lines.
They can then identify homes which have sump pump connected to the sewer line (as the sump pump does not have a trap)
Is this a common practice?
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I don't know how common it is, but I did a google on smoke testing to find information on testing for leaks in vent pipes inside the house and all the hits I got was on city doing smoke tests to ID houses on with gutters feeding the sanitary sewers.
The rain water will overload the sewage plant and cause release of untiled effluent. BIG EPA fines for doing this.
And cities with combined sewer systems have a bigger problem. Kansas City is just starting to work on this.
We I live the sewer system was replaced by a forced main system with holding tanks and ejector pumps at each house.
But in most cases it was connected up to stubs of the old system with the feed at the other end blocked off. So they where still getting a lot of extra water when it rained. So they smoke tested it.
I don't know how many gutter taps that they found.
But at my house the main was replaced by PVC where I built the patio over it when I built my house. But the idiot contractor that the city used to install the new system did not replace the clay or concrete tile sections and they had smoke bubbling out of the ground.
William the Geezer, the sequel to Billy the Kid - Shoe
If it has a pump then their test would have to pass smoke through the pump itself---- not very easy to do ;-)
As the other Bill stated a smoke test would show downspouts that were connected to the sewer.
i have seen smoke tests done to see who is hooked up to the sewer that might not be paying for sewer.
Yes I guess you're right on the sump pumpAround here the city sends "inspectors" to walk through the neighborhoods they are testingthe smoke passes harmlessly through the sewer line and up the vent pipe and out through the roof from my understanding
the smoke passes harmlessly through the sewer line and up the vent pipe and out through the roof from my understanding
Yup pretty much.