John Lansing

LNER entering Edinburgh

Everywhere I go outside of the US and Canada, there’s kids running around unattended - living with abundant transit and safe walking infrastructure. While it can be a bit annoying as an adult at times, I would have given anything to spend less time stuck at home as a kid.

This is typically pumped into the storm drainage which leads to the storm sewer or combined sanitary storm sewer. The way infiltration is handled can be tricky due to the fact this water is sometimes hazardous…and in the end, it would be just an attempt to put it back where it was pumped from.

Yes, they would drain into the storm drainage system in the building and go to either a storm sewer or combined sanitary storm sewer (whichever is available in the city). After the water treatment plant, the water typically goes to a river or the sea.

The wastewater-to-irrigation you mentioned in Vernon is a great example of good solutions that were much more common in the past.

It’s hard to compare these two in a meaningful way. Agriculture is greater in total volume since there are much few parking garages than there are farms but probably not in volume/area. Agriculture can use non-groundwater sources and reduce water-use and also use recycled sources like you mentioned.

Image from Onsite Water Reuse Program Guidebook from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission showing different sources of water that can be reclaimed

This groundwater is often recycled in San Francisco but what if it was left in the ground in the first place?

Here’s what that looks like, except this is just a giant empty pit waiting to get turned into an underground parking deck.

Underground parking garages, which are effectively required by parking mandates, are pumping out groundwater around the perimeter walls. Except this water doesn’t get used for anything, it’s just pumped directly to the sewer 24/7.

Yes, exactly (which is really about the maximum number of fixtures likely to discharge at once). Most design standards are based on very large flows at a single branch, which assume unrealistic and even impossible conditions in residential applications.

Pressure drop for various flow rates and a table recommending maximum stories served by drainage stack

Graph of pressure drop in single stack

While the results suggested far more conservative limits for 4 inch (100 mm) single stacks, a limit of 10 stories captures a significant percentage of multifamily housing.

Pressure drop curves for 6 inch (150 mm) stack

Photo of eight story experimental mock up facility

A drainage testing tower was constructed to test several drainage configurations.

The installation methods in India for sanitary drainage represented 12.5 percent of the total building cost, according to Chakrabarti.

Page of a book with four diagrams, one showing a fully ventilated, two pipe configuration, another showing a fully ventilated one pipe configuration another showing a modified one pipe configuration and another showing a single stack

The National Building Code of India (NBC) was based on the American Standard National Plumbing Code (essentially present day IPC) and the British Standards. British Standards reflected the single stack at this point in time yet the drainage configurations in India looked more like Victorian England.

Front page of book titled “Studies on the Development of Economical Drainage Systems for Multi-storeyed Buildings”

NIST sponsored a research project on the single stack in the 1980s at the Central Building Research Institute based in India, led by Shyamali Chakrabarti. This is all documented in this book she wrote, brought to Heriot-Watt University by NIST researcher Larry Galowin.

The worst part is, some parts of the country wouldn’t even allow this installation and would require an entire vent piping arrangement be added, easily costing thousands of dollars along with ripping out floors, ceilings, and walls in the area around the sink.

YouTube video by AP Plumbing Removing ILLEGAL S Trap Bathroom Sink Drain Replacement #shorts #plumber #plumbing #asmr

This video shows someone removing what would be considered a perfectly functional trap in most of the world and replacing it with a different type of trap along with a mechanical air admittance valve (AAV) to comply with US plumbing codes.

The streetcar is right there for them too🤦🏻‍♂️

No room for trees anyway if you value the conservation of Georgian-era Teslas and Vauxhall SUVs. 🙃

Second only to actually biking on the cobblestone streets

These mass produced Victorian homes (1896) are now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Edinburgh.

30. we need more folks in the US working on circular sanitation at the building and district scale!

this is way beyond composting toilets, folks!

bsky.app/profile/pipe...

It’s especially mind boggling to see these things successfully branded as a “necessity” while there’s tiny electric cars driving around in the Scottish Highlands by locals without a pickup anywhere to be seen. 🙃

Some of the seagulls have grown big enough to make it off their rooftop homes (and unable to fly back onto them) and are discovering water for the first time.

Redundancy (because there was and is already a trap at the fixture) based on the idea that sewer gases were one of the ways Cholera and Typhoid was spread.

Absolutely. Unless it’s a backwater valve (unlikely).

For context, here’s an interceptor chamber. Building traps are essentially the piping components shown here.

One of the areas of critique was the requirement for building traps. By 1895, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, Warsaw and many other cities had stopped requiring them. The UK continued using them until the mid 20th century. NYC and a few other East Coast cities still require them today.

Screenshot Gesundheits-Ingenieur from 1895. A portion of what’s shown is translated here; The Implementation of Domestic Drainage with Consideration of the Hygienic Importance of Sewer Gases. Lecture by A. Unna, Engineer, given at the Architects and Engineers Association for the Lower Rhine and Westphalia on May 6, 1895. (Conclusion) Ventilation of Domestic Pipes. Ventilation of domestic pipes is of great advantage. Although it cannot be admitted that this accelerates the oxidation of putrefaction products, it does bring about a strong dilution of the sewer gases. This is, however, quite difficult to achieve with the system of separating the domestic pipe from the street sewer by a main water shut-off (separation system). As previously mentioned, keeping the air from the street sewers away from the house pipes is unnecessary, since the air in the street sewers is significantly better than in the house pipes, and the penetration of infectious substances is impossible. Furthermore, since effective measures can be taken to prevent the penetration of sewer air into the house, these main water seals are not only no longer relevant, but are a significant obstacle to the thorough ventilation of the street sewers and house pipes. The air entrained in the downpipes must escape somewhere, and the natural route is the street sewer, not, as with some artificial ventilation devices, at ground level above the street sidewalk. This favorable ventilation can be observed in all cities that have abandoned the separation system, such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Hanau, Elberfeld, Bremen, Munich, Vienna, Warsaw, and many other cities, and we owe this progress in an outstanding way to the tireless efforts of Building Councilor Lindley in Frankfurt am Main, who, favored by his extensive practical activity, has provided evidence of the advantages of this system.

By the late 19th Century, engineers in Germany were raising questions on the underlying theory and intent behind the sanitary drainage design/installation methods adopted locally from the UK (like Miasma). Extensive discussion on sanitary drainage research is covered in Gesundheits-Ingenieur.

I believe it!