grinder water closets? - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

t walgamuth · #1 04-15-2018, 03:40 PM

Anybody have experience installing grinder toilets where the drain under the slab is not doing it's job?

cmac2012 · #2 04-15-2018, 08:13 PM

Just read about them for the first time. I guess it sounds like a good option. Would sure need to do the piping well. I'll just hang up and take my answer on the air.

t walgamuth · #3 04-15-2018, 11:22 PM

I'm not sure if I ever heard about them before but thought something like that should exist and searched for them.

They are essentially a sewage pump made to mate up and sit behind a wall discharge toilet bowl. They require a vent and discharge through a 2" pressurized pipe. One model will pump 15' vertically.

I could install them and run the discharge up into the attic and dump it into a vent pipe, though I doubt that is legal. ...or I could discharge them into the horizontal drain pipe they currently discharge into with regular WCs and just pressurize them. The combination of pressure and ground up solids might make them drain well.

I plan to try to find a local plumber who has installed one. I'll probably have to call our supplier to see if they have sold any.

cmac2012 · #4 04-16-2018, 12:20 AM

One of my clients has an outdoor kitchen that his brother in law from Poland built. Not bad, but has some oddball features. Provided me a lot of work when the electricity went south. He had the Romex coming out of concrete. Just ran it into the form and brought it out under the sink to take off from there. Only problem when the wires are held fast in concretew, any movement is absolute at that point - no give - and they had already started to break before the job was done I think, as they went completely south on me and there was no fixing it. They should have been in plastic conduit inside the concrete. I had rewire half of it all over.

But the issue that brings it to mind, the sink outlet was lower the the lowest point they could access in their sewage line so it had to be pumped uphill. Made an odd sound but it worked. No grinding needed.

I'll bet to really satisfy code you'd have to dump it into a main 3 or 4 inch toilet line on the other side of all vent connections. But that could be major work. I think going into a vent will work now and then. Your stuff has been made OK for 2 inch so who knows? But I think you would need to find a connection lower to the ground. Might need to sleuth it out and open a wall. Going to the attic and sending it downhill from there could have unexpected problems in the mix.

t walgamuth · #5 04-16-2018, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cmac2012

One of my clients has an outdoor kitchen that his brother in law from Poland built. Not bad, but has some oddball features. Provided me a lot of work when the electricity went south. He had the Romex coming out of concrete. Just ran it into the form and brought it out under the sink to take off from there. Only problem when the wires are held fast in concretew, any movement is absolute at that point - no give - and they had already started to break before the job was done I think, as they went completely south on me and there was no fixing it. They should have been in plastic conduit inside the concrete. I had rewire half of it all over.

But the issue that brings it to mind, the sink outlet was lower the the lowest point they could access in their sewage line so it had to be pumped uphill. Made an odd sound but it worked. No grinding needed.

I'll bet to really satisfy code you'd have to dump it into a main 3 or 4 inch toilet line on the other side of all vent connections. But that could be major work. I think going into a vent will work now and then. Your stuff has been made OK for 2 inch so who knows? But I think you would need to find a connection lower to the ground. Might need to sleuth it out and open a wall. Going to the attic and sending it downhill from there could have unexpected problems in the mix.

We have one 3" vent at least. Of course when you begin going downhill I expect it's required to go to a 3" minimum for the drain. I expect to have the wall open sooner or later.

cmac2012 · #6 04-16-2018, 03:00 PM

Like a lot of code regs, there's some over-engineering built in. Is a good thing for the most part but for various reasons at times you really want to do what will be adequate to work, but less than fully code legal. I'm doing a bathroom remodel now, was made twice as big, the new vanity is 8 feet away from prior plumbing and this is on a slab.

I also needed to spin the toilet 90 degrees, and to get optimal distance from both walls (in a corner) I needed to move the drain back and over a couple of inches. It made the most sense to tie into the toilet line for other reasons, and the need to move the toilet made it a no brainer. I found out however that hooking into the closet arm (the J shaped piece leading away from the toilet before it passes under the vent) is a no-no.

Would have made massive more work to go on the other side of it. I researched it hard, found a plumbing forum where some actual plumbers gave me good feedback.

Most were down on the idea. When I suggested that I up the drain from the sink, and vent servicing that drain (tied over to the main vent up above) to 2 inches from 1.5 one guy said he thought that would work if I turned the inlet on the Y fitting into the closet arm up 45 degrees. I gather that the problem with hooking it that way is that flushing the toilet can create a vacuum that will suck the water out of the sink trap.

I hooked all of my stuff up (the client wanted the toilet hooked back up for my use so I wouldn't be using the tenant's toilet (he has two housemates) so this gave a great chance to observe matters before covering it up with a tile floor. I installed the old toilet and put in a cheapo 1-1/4 plastic trap on the sink drain fitting. Sure enough, when flushing the toilet the water in the trap would move up and down some but was not pulled out. I suspect my improved venting helped.

Here's my thread on that, maybe the forum could be useful to you. Shortly after I joined they switched to a different format, advertising now dominates half the page. I could swear participation dropped off. I don't like it much. Still usable but ...

https://www.plumbingforums.com/threads/hooking-drain-for-new-sink-into-toilet-line.12892/#post-97489

t walgamuth · #7 04-18-2018, 11:08 PM

Thanks Cmac, I'll have a look.

This morning the lady in suite B emailed saying the east WC was backed up. I had sent my brother out yesterday for the same reason and he said when he got there it was already working fine. So today she emails again and says its backed up. I send him out again and he again found it working fine when he got there. He said he flushed it five times to be sure. So I email her back and tell her what he said. She emailed back a little while ago and says no it is backed up WTF?

So tomorrow we'll look at it again.

t walgamuth · #8 04-19-2018, 01:22 PM

I went out and looked and the toilet was working fine. I discussed the overall situation with the owner, explaining about the grinder toilet and such. She understands that her female employees are plugging it with too much paper and is encouraging them to flush twice.

t walgamuth · #9 04-24-2018, 03:47 AM

plugged again. What a pain.

cmac2012 · #10 04-25-2018, 04:18 AM

Do you know for sure the venting is OK? I've been studying plumbing more and more and it can be tricky. I wish I'd apprenticed in it years ago. Good plumbers can easily make 6 figures plus. And the good ones are worth it.

Have you taken it off the floor yet? Several years ago I was doing a lot of work on a house and one of the toilets was prone to issues. I pulled it off and there was a weird place at the bottom exit flange where 3 or 4 Q tips had found a place to get stuck. Blocked about a third of the opening.

Another time I was maintenance man at a health spa, similar issues. I pulled it off and a piece of dental floss had gotten caught on a small jagged bit of porcelain at the exit point, something that should have been smoothed over at the factory. Even so, what an odd coincidence it caught and hung on, and it then caught a condom and it had toilet paper all over it. Weird. I filed that porcelain down Imo tell you what.

t walgamuth · #11 04-25-2018, 07:33 AM

So yesterday I got a plumber out there. I decided to install one vac assisted WC in each office suite where they were having trouble. The first one had both toilets inop. Would not respond to plunging. So we picked the womens and he removed the WC and ran the line. He hit something hard and chewed through it. Viola! Good drainage. In that suite there were Kohler two stage 1.6 gallon flushers. So if you don't hold the lever down you get about a gallon flush, holding it down will get all mighty 1.6 gal. So if it works well I'll pan to install another vac assist later.

In the other suite, when I got there I plunged it five or six times and got it flushing fine. We went ahead and changed that one to the vac assist anyway as the ladies use a load of TP. He ran that line too and found nothing in it so it was just lots of paper and not enough flushing water. The one we removed is a Gerber single stage flush 1.6 gallon.

I saved the Gerber and put the Kohler fancy two stage flush on the curb with a sign saying it works as designed and its free.

Thursday the guy with the video camera is coming to film and record my main line to check for low spots but at the moment it would appear to be not a problem.

cmac2012 · #12 04-25-2018, 02:18 PM

It can be a serious mess. I gather that 1/4 per inch slope is recommended as greater slope will supposedly allow the water to outrun the solids and leave them behind. And then there is the new issue of not enough water to take the stuff away.

But if one is stuck with bad lines, wrong slope, bottlenecks, whoa, replacing those is a serious challenge. One of my best clients lives in a house at least 80 years old. The plumbing is old and weird. I've replace problem bits of it with ABS but plenty is still old and funky. It's a crawl space so some of it could be replaced but dang, doing that hard work in a crawl space is a chore.

t walgamuth · #13 04-26-2018, 06:48 PM

Did I mention my line is under the slab?

Yikes!

t walgamuth · #14 05-01-2018, 04:43 AM

So Larry the roto guy filmed my lines about a week ago and gave me a thumbdrive with the video to watch. Being the eternal optomist I did not look at them yet.

Yesterday afternoon I got the call again, the accountant's toilets were down. I called the plumber and they said they'd get him there asap. I got a call late afternoon that it would not be til morning.

So today we'll look at venting first, then roto the drains that run from the toilets to the main building drain.

Unless our sleuthing reveals something the next step is to install a grinder toilet I guess.

barry12345 · #15 05-02-2018, 03:55 PM

I was going to comment much earlier. Then thought better of it. Both toilets acting up was somewhat signifigant.

I am all too familiar with the final output of lines meeting existing higher water levels. This gets the toilet paper left in the line to accumulate. As the flow reduces to zero. Then the toilets themselves seem to plug up much easier.

I found this was really problematic and intermittent on occasion so hard to establish. Typical on septic systems where the tanks fluid level increases because the field is too slow to drain. Usually because the people have increased the system loading periodically. I have had to improve the systems field capacity.

The so called ideal drain slope of historical standing is two percent or about a quarter of an inch per foot. Yet the coefficient of friction as materials used to manufacture drain pipes has changed. Has made me rethink this a little.

Since both toilets are acting up I would want to establish where the two lines meet anywhere before they discharge into the city system. Then examine beyond that. Looking for high water. Although as mentioned if this is intermittent it can be hard to find.

You might ask the city to examine their main line. Especially if it is a freebee. I suspect there is no regular need normally to clean or check it. Unless a possible complaint is received. Your plumbers seem to have found nothing really signifigant so far. If the main street line is older the city department may also have history on it.

If those two toilets where not problematic in the past something has changed. Although there was some at least partially hard obstruction removed in one line. It may or may not have been there for a long time.

People will be putting toilets out curbside for the spring cleanup soon. Enough of them each year with many being not that old. Things stuck in their traps is my probable assessment on many of them. Floating plastic toys or objects in the traps can drive the owners of them crazy.

You have a video that hopefully goes all the way out to the street. Try to examine the water level in the cities drain. Although your plumber should have caught it if was too high. Unless again it is an intermittent condition.

It probably would take your plumber to ask about the city drain if he finds nothing else. Two toilets not used by the same people increases the strength of my suspicion.

I have seen toilets operating on really far too flat drainage lines. They are slow but seem to not have major problems. All this said I am not a plumber at the same time.

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