We needed to hook up the septic side lines to run from the bedrooms and garage to the main central line coming from under the basement. The original plan had these running under the house, but the plumber suggested that it would be much easier to run the line outside the house completely… At some later point, we also decided to run the bedroom electrical along this outside line. Of course, this all required some digging. Gota love that nice soft sand.
The Video
Some details
The Stack:
The bedroom septic line had a further run and needed to be below frost depth, so it connected at a lower point on the stack. Then I connected the garage line at a higher point. However, I thought it would be a good idea to slope it more and get deeper than I had to… Some plumbers say that you shouldn’t slope too much because the solids and liquids will separate and you will have clogging problems. I have done my research and determined that was not true (just a plumbers wives’ tale) so I didn’t mind sloping it more. However, after making the stack connection with the Y-pipe shown in the video, I decided that I didn’t like the angle of the connection. Basically, these pipes are designed to connect at closer to perpendicular or maybe 5 degrees off. My original connection was maybe 20 degrees off. It was probably sealed, but it didn’t look great and I didn’t want to take any chances. I ended up cutting off that Y-connection and extending the stack so i could connect at a higher point with less slope.
The Shortcut:
The plumbing and the electrical in the bedroom wing both connect in the laundry room, very close to eachother so they can exit from the same hole and follow the same trench… However, I didn’t measure conservatively enough and although the electrical cables could reach the panel, I was worried about being a few inches short of making final connections, so we ended up digging a short cut trench for the electrical cables. At least we could still re-use about 2/3rds of the trench.
The Electrical cables:
Earlier, I had experimented with other kinds of cable, running thru conduit. This time I was using cable that was certified to be directly buried. It was still in conduit where it came out of the garage (because it is not certified to be encased in concrete and because I didn’t want a potential leak above the floor anyway), but then came out of the conduit below the footings level. I basically wired it according to above ground code with the required depth below the footing and bushings, etc. After burial, it will only further exceed code.
Gallery
Just some pics…
