Posted on 02/28/2011 6:33:25 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink.
Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.
The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem.
Now officials are stocking up on a $14 million, three-year supply of highly concentrated sodium hypochlorite - better known as bleach - to act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city's treated water before it's dumped into the bay. It will also be used to sanitize drinking water.
That translates into 8.5 million pounds of bleach either being poured down city drains or into the drinking water supply every year.
Not everybody thinks it's a good idea.
A Don't Bleach Our Bay alert has just gone out from eco-blogger Adam Lowry who argues the city would be much better off using a disinfectant like hydrogen peroxide - or better yet, a solution that would naturally break down the bacteria.
As for whether the supposedly environmentally friendly, low-flow toilets are worth the trouble? Well, according to Jue, they have helped trim San Francisco's annual water consumption by about 20 million gallons.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The Wookie’s “toilet” is a special design:
Picture something like the Grand Canyon only with Titanium walls and a roaring river below to handle the highly corrosive, 100 tons per minute, 20 times per day events.
No wonder, they have been digging in the WH since the summer. Apparently, it’s an outhouse as designed above.
The Wookie isn’t Mary Antoinette. The historical Paris underground sewer system would have been instantly plugged in a single event and France would have become a wasteland.
Professor Alinsky, Renowned Consultant in All Shitty Matters
LOL
They would have us believe that theirs doesn’t stink.
Ah,old memories there..out on s*** burning detail I see.
Wish I`d taken one of those shots,tho I do have one of
the pi** tubes that were buried in our Co area
I assume the chemical will be added at offending points in the system, such as a pumping station, long before it hits the treatment plant. If the author gives the impression it will be added right before final discharge to the environment, I think that is probably incorrect.
Water quality standards set a range of residual disinfectant concentration in potable water. Put too much of that stuff in the potable water and they will violate water quality standards. Someone is clueless.”””
I live on a septic system. Have since 1993. Lived on septic on the farm from 1947 to 1963.
There are certain things you cannot do with a septic system.
One of them is to use bleach. Another is to use a garbage disposal. A third is to pour hot grease into your sink/drain. Feminine tampons is another absolute NO NO.
The BLEACH destroys the active bacteria that is needed to make the septic system function properly.
The ground up junk from a garbage disposal clogs a septic system, as it isn’t designed to handle such debris.
Grease NEVER should be put down a sink/drain. It may be hot & moving when you pour it, but within seconds, it is cooled & attached itself to the insides of all your pipes. This will surely end in disaster for you & a bonanza for your plumber.
The tampons are easy to deduce.
RID-X is the thing to use. Flush a dose down your toilet every month & you will never have a problem. My father built a new house in 1966 & I inherited that house. He was religious about the use of Rid-X. When I sold the property to my brother & the state of Wisconsin insisted in 2005that there MUST be a septic problem after all those years, they required my brother to dig it up.
The entire system was clean as a whistle. No clogs. No unusual items found. The septic system & the Rid-X had done a stellar job.
I do not use bleach. Too old for tampons.
I use Rid-X here with regularity. My neighbor across the street has exactly the same sype of system & length of leach lines. Their house has a garbage disposer, which the wife insisted was OK to use.
They have had 2 tear-ups of the system in less than 6 years.
I cannot fix stupid.
Yes I think he is incorrect on the point you made (before discharge) and incorrect when he said it was going to be added to drinking water. Like I said, I get the impression he is clueless. Have a great day.
There is a natural solution that's already at work; hence the "rotten egg" smell the locals are complaining about! Lots of happy little microbes are digesting tons of liberal crap in the underhydrated sewer system. Unfortunately for the tender noses of the Pelosi constituency, the little beasties are also producing tons of hydrogen sulfide in the process.
It seems fitting, however, that Babylon-by-the-Bay should start to smell like a third-world cesspool.
bookmark to read more later.
Low-flow toilets cause a stink in SF
Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.
From an Engineering point that just doesn't make any sense or even seem plausible. As that old saying goes:
Sh*t flows downhillAnd that saying is a truism as sewer systems function because of that Law of Physics called Gravity. If you look at a map of SF and where AT&T Park is located, any 'sludge buildup' there cannot be blamed on Low Flow Toilets. Even the first generation models that weren't exactly engineered correctly - thanks to congress and their deadline mandate.
FWIW we have a 'Low Flow' toilet in our Powder Room. I installed it when I remodeled the Room a few years ago. The wife wanted a Kohler and I wanted American Standard. She won - naturally - and I put the Kohler in. More important; It's never had to be 'Double Flushed'. And when you flush it, you know it's being flushed. It's a 'Man Flush' ;-)
My Googling came up with 180 gallons per person per day.
That makes 20 million gallons the equivalent of 304 people.
The “savings” is most likely a made up statistic anyway to show some positive result out of this greenie “eco-toilet” disaster.
So, have the water rates gone up since revenue went down due to lower consumption?
Nope, but I haven't been forced to put them everywhere in my living area, either. If they were the only game in town, I suspect that I'd have paid more attention to them, beyond the one in my (well ventilated, cement-floored) garage workshop.
So, I think you're right in that it's a bit of a red herring, but it's still a valid one, IMHO.
I appreciated the info on the toilets. I just purchased a house that use the low flow ones, none of them work with a flip. I'll check the brand names - I had just chalked it up to "low flow". Figured that, more or less, a toilet was a toilet.
Nope, but I haven't been forced to put them everywhere in my living area, either. If they were the only game in town, I suspect that I'd have paid more attention to them, beyond the one in my (well ventilated, cement-floored) garage workshop.
So, I think you're right in that it's a bit of a red herring, but it's still a valid one, IMHO.
I appreciated the info on the toilets. I just purchased a house that use the low flow ones, none of them work worth a flip. I'll check the brand names - I had just chalked it up to "low flow". Figured that, more or less, a toilet was a toilet.
Well, there ya go. It's SF, the stinking hippies don't shower or wash their clothes, thus the problem.
Sewer pipes are usually placed at as low a slope as possible, and need at least 2 feet per second velocity to “self-clean” at a given rate of flow. Being a non-pressure system, either a steeper pipe slope or a higher flow are needed to move things along and prevent clogging.
If the new toilets produce a lower flow per flush, then velocity drops below 2 fps in the main, and things pile up in the pipe until enough flow develops to flush things through...
“If the new toilets produce a lower flow per flush, then velocity drops below 2 fps in the main, and things pile up in the pipe until enough flow develops to flush things through...”
Toilets are a very minor portion of the water in a sewer...sinks, dishwashers, washing machines, etc....etc..
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