Sub pump with 2″ discharge pipe clogging up from silt clay in the water.
I have a 10’deep x 5′ diameter pre-cast concrete man hole with two pumps alternating for my 6″ footing drains located outside of the house. This is a new construction house. I put down 12″ inches of trap rock in the basement floor with 4″ perforated pipe and grid pattern tied into my six-inch footing drains. I also put down filter fabric before the trap rock went down and over the 6″perforated pipe. What is happening is a orange colored clay is sticking on the inside wall of the 2″ pipe closing it down to 1″on the inside walls. Seems like every six months this occurs. With 4″ of rain coming this weekend I’m concerned.There is a stream about 100’away could these pumps be to strong? Could the sealed concrete manhole be causing problems? I have good photos of this that I’d like to send to you, please let me know where to send them.
Thank you! Pete F.
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Replies
Peter,
You wrote, "orange colored clay is sticking on the inside wall of the 2" pipe." But you never explained anything about 2" pipe. Is this the discharge pipe for the pumps? If so, where are you discharging the water to?
Martin,
The 2" pipe is discharged into the flow side of stream which is part of the town drainage system.We have backflow preventers on the two pump's. How can I e-mail you the photos?
Peter, how far above the bottom of the manhole is your pump inlet? Space should have been allowed for solids to settle out, similar to a septic tank. Fine clay particles may take a long time to come out of suspension though.
Michael,
The pump inlet is 2' up from the bottom of the 5' sealed diameter base. I have photos that which will help.
Peter, you can load your photos onto a web-based photo hosting program and post a link here. Examples are shutterfly.com, photobucket.com, or flickr.com. Somehow Dan Morrison was able to imbed a photo from google's picassa.com here https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/community/forum/general-questions/16090/html-hints-dummies but I'm not sure how that works.
Michael,
That will be great I will put together a little photo album of start to finish. It may take a day where would you like me to post it?
Right here is good.
Michael & Martin,
I have created a webpage with photos click on the link below. If you are not sure what my options are please pass it along. http://www.preferredbuilders.biz/Mystery_water
Thank you,
Peter
Wow...that looks like nasty stuff. What confuses me is that none of the excavated earth around your foundation shows any sign of the orange clay that ends up in your sump. Just guessing here, but perhaps this is not clay at all...I have seen iron bacteria do that to water lines....
Garth,
It is really nasty stuff, I tried to provide views of everything with the photos so that I can come tool a solution to resolve this.Your right we did not see orange clay while we were excavating.
It does look alot like iron bacteria. Peter, have you tried taking a sample to a lab for identification?
Lucas,
I have not taken samples to a lab. I have samples just not sure what the lab to send it to. If there is iron in the bacteria what would the remedy be?
Peter,
You should be able to take a sample to any lab that does water quality testing (a local well owner should be able to tell you where one is). Where I live it is not uncommon for well water to contain iron bacteria. Typically it shows up in toilet tanks and other plumbing fixtures as an orange colored sludge similar to what appears in your photos. Most people simply ignore the problem until it either stains the fixture or causes a plug. Most people then simply replace the affected fixture. The bacteria can be killed through water treatment but because of the expense this would normaly only be done if the water is to be potable.
If I were you I would start by having a sample tested and then go from there.
Peter
If it is a bacteria problem, it is likely to be common in your area. You might ask local plumbers what they are experiencing and what they are doing to treat it... If it is bacteria, it can be difficult to impossible to get rid of...
Garth,
This orange material when he gets on clothing is impossible to get out.It's been almost 2 years now and I would've thought by now it would have raised itself out.
I wonder if the pump's are sucking it out of the ground. In the three pages of photos you could see all of the trap rock and perforated pipe I installed now I wonder if it's acting as a great giant vacuum cleaner?
Pete,
The pumps aren't sucking this out of the ground, since they are decoupled from the ground piping (only removing what is in the sump) and the piping itself is perforated and would break suction. And that's not clay, but ferric oxide deposits from iron bacteria.
That means there is high iron content in the soil and a source of organic material for the little buggers to feed on. The organic source can be the soil itself, or septic leachate or petroleum fuels leaking into the ground.
Unless you can find a source of contamination and eliminate that, the only way you're going to reduce - but never eliminate - the slime and mineral deposition is to periodically shock the sump with chlorine at 1000 ppm (and discharge that mix after 24-hours or longer into the ground not into the stream).
Also, any way you can reduce the ground-water flow into the system will make it go longer between purges. This could include gutters and downspouts and grading.
Robert,
when I was e-mailing you last week, we lost power for four days. I would not be able to leave the chlorine inside of the pump station for 24 hours. The pump runs about every 20 minutes.The house was hooked up to the town's sewer system,but had a small septic tank. Would fresh air inside of this pump station help right now there is no air at all with the heavy metal top.
Fresh air won't help since this is an aerobic process. These bacteria can live in both aerobic and anaerobic environments, but oxygen accelerates the oxidation and deposition process.
Robert,
Thanks for your response, at this point I'm not really sure what to do with these lines clogging up?Do you have any more suggestions.
Sorry, I have no more suggestions. I would never build on a site that wet.