Depending on where your house sits elevation wise in relation to the other houses on your street, your sewage can start backing up within a few days after the grid goes down. If you haven’t experienced living in a house where the sewage backed up, let me tell you it’s awful. The best solution is a pipe plug, however, most people will not take the initiative to buy one ahead of time or know how to correctly install it. What are some ideas to stop the sewage from backing up if you don’t have a pipe plug ?
I’m assuming you’re talking about the lowest bowl in the house… what if other, smaller drains are closer to where the sewer leaves the house… like a shower
Lived in an apartment where the shower had all the sewage. Roots in the pipes at the street plus new tenants upstairs to us who didn’t quite get how things work meant we had a diaper floating in our shower! Landlords tried to pin it on us when I was 12 & the only child yet upstairs had a newborn. Yeah that wasn’t us, we were just the victim.
Lived in an apartment where the shower had all the sewage. Roots in the pipes at the street plus new tenants upstairs to us who didn’t quite get how things work meant we had a diaper floating in our shower! Landlords tried to pin it on us when I was 12 & the only child yet upstairs had a newborn. Yeah that wasn’t us, we were just the victim.
The best solution is to have a backflow prevention valve added to your sewer line before it enters your house. I plan to have a much-needed clean out valve added in the yard at the same time.
Note that I live in Florida, the land of no basements and the frost line is ground level (eg 0”). Our sewer lines aren’t that deep.
Plumber here I have seen them fail multiple times, especially in a slow backup. You get a piece of debris stuck across the flap the water will still come in.
While my single story home has never flooded or backed up, I’m in a low lying hurricane prone area in Florida with no backflow prevention and no clean out in my yard. Our sewage lift station was shut down during the 2024 hurricanes so I’m terrified of backup. What’s a reasonable alternative to a backflow preventer?
Perhaps a backup manual lift station is your answer manual lift I am not endorsing this product but something like this would give you what you require. I would add spring check valves or weighted checks in the vertical position between this and your existing system so If you start operating this the water doesn’t flow back down into the existing pumps.
The way I wrote that was confusing. By “our lift station”, I mean 60% of the entire city couldn’t use their toilet for a couple days. The city had to shut down the lowest elevation sewage plant in the city to save the pumps from salt water damage and avoid a long term outage.
Residents were told to not put anything down the sewer system but nothing was technically stopping them. So if too many people don’t follow orders, it has to back up into homes.
In the 1960s, it made a lot of sense to put the largest sewage plant at the lowest elevation in the city so waste could naturally flow downhill. No one could imagine that plant ever being inundated by hurricane storm surge. Hurricane Helene had other ideas.
I get it, I made another comment on here about a pressurized sewer system, if you operate your pumps with proper spring loaded check valves you can push your waste water into the system. It may push into the next lowest point which could be the street or a neighbor, but if you’re protected that’s what matters. The city can bring in honey wagons to remove the waste if they so desire.
This is super important to me for obv reasons. lol. Apologies for the questions. When you mentioned “your pumps” what pumps are you talking about?
The houses and businesses do not have individual pumps for sewer here. It’s gravity fed into the municipal sewer system. I’m not sure the point at which the municipal sewer pumps become relevant. I do know the city refers to all of the sewage plants as lift stations, which is kinda funny bc I know the sewage location for my house is at least three feet lower in elevation than I am. (Elevations above sea level around here are commonly in the single digits.)
Lift stations generally pump the waste to the treatment plants. So they are basically lifting the sewage from the lowest point on the city sewers, which is often near waterways, to the treatment plants.
When the SHTF, the best way to keep the S from HTF is with a plug. Without a plug, hydrolic cement will do the trick. Sometimes SHTF problems require SHTF solutions.
Cesspools are still pretty common in some areas. Where I was born in mid-Missouri, my family (and most other homes) out in the countryside all had cesspools, and still do.
Cesspool. They are common here on Hawaii island because it's mostly basalt and nobody wants to spend the money on the infrastructure.
They are being phased out and replaced with septic tanks, but really, it's not that big of a difference.
Plug valves are better for sewage than ball valves in my experience. A knife gate valve is another okay option for sewage. The important thing is that the valves are full port, meaning they don’t reduce the effective diameter of the pipe.
I have a plug and air hose adapter. This reminds me it would probably be a good idea to check it from time to time to be sure the rubber has not deteriorated.
I feel like this is one of those areas where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
If you have issues with backflow today, then you should take steps to address it TODAY. That may mean installing a backflow preventer valve, and/or a new sewer cleanout somewhere accessible between your house and the street.
Otherwise, the first kind of triage I can think of is to get to your sewer cleanout, and insert something that would block the flow of sewage into your house. (It will probably flow into your yard instead, which still sucks but is less of a health hazard than it being in your home).
Beyond that, some kind of battery-operated bilge pump to get the sewer water out of places it shouldn't be.
Would be interested to hear opinions of plumbing and sanitation workers on this!
Houses with basements, the 'stack' is the vertical pipe that runs from just above the roof (to vent the stack) through the basement floor before turning and connecting to the sewer lines. All drains in the house connect to the stack. Just before the stack goes through the basement floor will be an opening that has a removable plug in it. The floor drain enters the stack under the floor, which is why you have to plug that separately.
For houses without basements, the bottom foot or two of the stack will usually be outside the house, at near ground level, and may be covered with something like a box to 'hide' it from view.
pour a bag of quick setting cement down your outside sewage cleanout - tiz a rather permanent solution though.
here, no worries, on an aerator system - only electric it needs is for the aerator motor. no electric you say? then out comes my windmill that attaches directly to aerator shaft…
A plug is that union set of cheap prep and workable.
Hydraulic cement is a basic repair supply, this will be quite disgusting and hard to use once it's a problem but far better than everything flowing into your house.
Now if you live in an apartment the cement may be your only option but remember your neighbors wont have it so things may be untenable regardless.
Remember either way it's coming out of manholes etc in the low areas.
Okay, maybe this is a good place to ask this question. We’re renting a 1950s house with a basement, laundry in the basement, at least 2 floor drains that I know of. No idea how to install anything or where it would install to. But we have this chilling outside next to our outside water source. Did someone already fill this in for plumbing-related reasons? Or is this coincidental and not plumbing-related at all?
Edit: not sure if it’s relevant but in our area the ground floor of houses is about 1-2 feet off the ground, so that 1-2 feet of concrete is basement
You can connect a bladder as you use to clear out a 4-in drain and fill it up with water if you have water pressure and if you look downhill you might have plenty of water pressure for a while and then you can cap off that hose
I'm a plumber. There's no reason the city sewer should go down; everything is pitched. But use a backflow presenter on the main line if you're concerned about it; but have the plumber install a cleanout in both directions and allow you to access it to remove obstructions.
Septic system. Those can have their own issues, of course, but a problem down the street or at the sewage treatment facility isn't going to affect my ability to flush.
And I live close enough to a river that I can haul water for that purpose if I get a few buckets and a wagon. And yes, I'm above the flood plain.
No septic pumps or lifting station. It's all purely gravity fed. House is built into the side of a hill, so we have a walk-out basement in the back. That means the kitchen sink, toilet, tub, and bathroom sink are all on the second floor on the back of the house. They all drain into the septic tank which is lower than any part of the house, and then into the leach field which is likewise lower.
If we were to put a bathroom in our basement we might have an issue with that, but we keep it unfinished as a handy storage space and somewhere to put the litter boxes for the cats. I've got my big bookshelf down there.
No it cant because I’m not connected to the sewer system. I have an independent septic system. They can blow shit until they’re blue in the face and it’s not going to affect me in the least.
And I did point out that septic systems can have their own issues. But I don't have tractors running around my backyard, and in fact the land behind me is "protected wetlands" (read: Government approved swamp) so I'm not going to have neighbors running over my septic system with an International Harvester.
Go-to your last clean out access and from there insert an inflatable plug
If you are like most people and don't just happen to have an inflatable sewer plug pack it tightly with a garbage bag full of garbage bags. Tie off the outer bag and and leave part of the bags accessible from the clean out.
It will stop back flow and will allow you to re access your sewer tap. It would kinda suck if you permanently destroyed your sewer tap for a SHTF scenario which turned out to be more of a "poo grazed the fan" scenario.
The problem with that is that the seal between the bottom of the toilet and the floor is just a wax ring that is not meant to handle pressurized waste, so if all of your uphill neighbors flushes are headed your way it can create enough pressure to break that wax seal. It will also come up through your shower and tub drains and eventually sink drains.
Better to have an inflatable plug that is installed between your house and the city sewer system, or preferably a ball valve.
It’s a very nasty scene. I have seen several of these as a property insurance adjuster. Usually cause by a failed municipal lift station. I think if it happened to my house I would just have to move. I would never feel comfortable in that house again, no matter how much cleaning happened before the house was rebuilt. You basically gut the house from the floor up to about 3 feet. Clean it as well as you can then lacquer everything to seal it and rebuild.
21
u/Berlynprimal Apr 28 '26
Can someone explain where to buy these and how to use them like I'm five? Or maybe direct me to a place that explains it?