Replies

1. 
   Guest_ | Jul 01, 2000 07:45am | #11

   *
   I will be building a general purpose shop building in a rural area. The shop will be near my well and slightly uphill from my vegetable garden. As I will be rebuilding my '37 chevy truck, among other things, I am sure that there will be an occasional spill of oil, antifreeze, and other less than wholesome liquids on the floor and the apron. I plan on having a floor drain within the shop but it might also be good to catch the runoff from the apron into some type of a drain. Does anyone have suggestions for the best way to contain, trap, and possibly separate contaminants so that they can readily be disposed of? (Sorry about ending the sentence with a preposition, to those who take offense at such things.)

1. 
   Guest_ | Jun 29, 2000 05:20am | #1

   *Casey: While I'm tempted to prattle on about the rise time of different sizes of oil droplets and the advantages of coalescing media in a oil water separator (OWS), there is a shorter, more meaningful answer to your question.1) look at a service station's OWS for good ideas of how to do it. It's often located under a few square feet of steel checkerplate.2) basically you need a baffle then a wier on the outlet end. The baffle is a plate coming from above with a gap at the bottom to let the water to pass underneath and hold the oil back. The wier, like a dam, defines the height of the water to be above the bottom of the wier. Such a set up allows wash-down water to pass on through to your septic(?) system while retaining the oil/gasoline. Note that while you are trying to do the responsible thing and I encourage you to do so, your state/city may well prohibit the connection of floor drains to sewer or septic. Guess you're supposed to let it run out the garage door onto the ground. -David

1. 
   Guest_ | Jun 29, 2000 01:06pm | #2

   *Casey:If you're rebuilding one truck, I'd stick with a bag of oil-dry and a trash bag to haul it away in. Around here, you can take your waste oil, trans fluid, anutfreeze, etc. in 1 gal containers to any service station.

1. 
   Guest_ | Jun 29, 2000 01:06pm | #3

   *"Sorry about ending the sentence with a preposition, to those who take offense at such things."When called to task for such an offense, Winston Churchill reportedly responded: "There is some nonsense [or something like that] up with which I shall not put." Bob

1. 
   Guest_ | Jun 29, 2000 01:54pm | #4

   *Ryan - In my experience, New Jersey has never gotten cold enough to cause anutfreeze. Alaska is another story ...Jeff

2. 
   Guest_ | Jun 29, 2000 03:54pm | #5

   *I end my sentences with propositions all the time. Like this one, would someone like to pet my monkey ?LOL(Oh, and as for the preposition thing.... It would probably be hard to find a single post by me wherein I did not end somewhere in a preposition...)

3. 
   Guest_ | Jun 29, 2000 06:22pm | #6

   *You should not end a sentence with a preposition.doh, I just did it!

4. 
   Guest_ | Jun 29, 2000 11:51pm | #7

   *I think it's ok to end with a prepositional phrase. It's the preposition itself that's bad.Now if I could just learn to spell...

5. 
   Ted_LaRue_ | Jun 30, 2000 05:50am | #8

   *Yeah....those dangling prepositions really off me tick.

6. 
   Guest_ | Jun 30, 2000 04:34pm | #9

   *Not to mention the post-participle depression that goes along with them . . . ;-)

7. 
   Guest_ | Jul 01, 2000 07:42am | #10

   *I've installed what you describe in my garage.Our City code basically has two positions on the subject. You can either run the floor drains into a single sump pit which is in no way connected to the city sewers or you can run the floor drains into a two compartment sump pit which is designed to separate the sludge and oil from the water, which is then allowed to empty into city sewers.With the first option you're stuck pumping out the pit when it fills, and I would guess for most people that would mean pumping it right back into the sewer which seems a little self defeating. With the second option, you only need to pump out the pit when the sludge and oil build up to overflowing (in both compartments). In a residential garage, I wouldn't expect that to happen very often (if ever).I choose to go with a 2 compartment pit connected to city sewer only because the garage floor is heated and winter snow melting off the car adds up. Unless you have similar expectations, or plan to do a lot of washing up inside, I would stick with a single sump pit. It's way simpler and cheaper.Our city's minimum dimensions for garage sump pits are laughable. Basically they have no 'residential' version of the code, so comercial specs are required. That means a pit something like 7' deep by 6' wide or some other jumbo size. Fortunately the inspectors are reasonable people and they allowed for a more appropriate residential size. Eventually I ended up using a pre-cast concrete pit. It's roughly 3' wide by 6' long by 3' deep with a concrete divider wall creating the two compartments. It came cast with ABS pipe couplers imbedded in the compartment walls and the divider at the heights I specified to fit the floor drain slopes. The floor drains enter the first compartment which is connected to the second compartment by a 90 degree elbow. The elbow is positioned facing down with the end sitting 5" - 6" off the pit bottom. The second compartment is connected to the city sewer by another 90 degree elbow. A picture would be worth a million words here, but basically, the whole design ensures that mid-level contents of one compartment are drained to the next. So anything that floats (gas, oil, anti-freeze, etc.) and anything that sinks (sludge, gravel, mud, etc.) stays in the compartment and out of the city sewer.I single sump pit is still a much simpler way to go if you can live with it....