To make living in a country cottage comfortable, you need to take care of equipping the house with amenities - supply water, set up heating, etc. The complexity of the task lies in the fact that often there are no centralized systems in the villages, so you have to build local installations for supplying water and draining wastewater. Consider how a sewerage device can be implemented in a private house on its own.
Home improvement work depends on the specific conditions. So, if it is possible to connect to a citywide collector, then it will be necessary to assemble internal networks and issue a permit for tie-in into a common pipe.
But since central sewage in a private house is a rarity, it is necessary to plan the installation of local treatment facilities. Fortunately, today on the market you can find a wide variety of models of septic tanks.
Beginning of work
To start a sewerage device in a private house with your own hands, like any construction work, you always need to start with the same thing - drafting a project. You should not rely "on chance" and hope to deal with all the issues during the installation process.
This approach almost always leads to various errors and shortcomings, as a result of which the assembled circuit either does not work at all, or does not work efficiently enough.
Advice! It is rather difficult to draw up a sewerage project for a private house on your own, especially if the conditions on the site are not ideal, and this is what happens most often. The conditions at each site are individual, so it is not always possible to use a typical project.
Choice of treatment plant
We begin the sewerage device with the selection of a treatment plant. There are two options here:
- Build a septic tank yourself.
- Purchase an industrial production model ready for installation.
In the first case, it may be possible to spend less money, but it will take much more time to build. In addition, with the self-construction of septic tank chambers, it is often not possible to achieve the required level of tightness, and then such a treatment plant will pose a threat to the ecological purity of the soil and groundwater.
Therefore, today most homeowners prefer to buy ready-made models of industrial septic tanks.
Advice! Modern manufacturers offer septic tanks of different capacities. For a summer cottage, you can purchase a mini-septic tank, it is affordable and can process up to a cubic meter of wastewater per day. And for a country house, a model of greater productivity is needed, its choice is made after assessing the volume of effluents generated in the house per day.
With a large flow of water, a modern biotreatment station can be included in the sewerage scheme in a private house. These are compact plants capable of treating large volumes of water in a short time. The stations are energy-dependent, since the processes of cleaning and moving liquid between the chambers are carried out using compressors.
What conditions may affect the choice of a septic tank?
In order to competently make a local sewage system and choose the most suitable model of a septic tank, you need to take into account the operating conditions of the future system:
- Performance. As already mentioned, the treatment plant must be of such a capacity that it can successfully cope with the volume of wastewater generated in the house. This value, in turn, depends on the number of households in the house (the average rate of water consumed by one person is 200-220 liters) and on the number of plumbing fixtures. It is clear that in a cottage with several bathrooms, a jacuzzi, a sauna and a pool, the water consumption will be much higher than in a country house equipped with one shower, toilet and washbasin.
- Frequency of operation. So, for a house in which it is planned to live permanently, it is most convenient to purchase installations that work on biomaterial. This option allows you to clean the drains well and reduce the amount of solid waste. But for a dacha, which is rarely visited, this option will not work, since the bacteria will simply die while the sewer is idle.
- Geological component. When planning the arrangement of sewage in a private house, one cannot ignore the characteristics of the soil on the site. Thus, the presence of non-filtering soils (clay) or high-lying groundwater can become an obstacle to the operation of some models of treatment plants. Difficulties may also arise in the presence of a complex relief, since in this case, the organization of the movement of fluid by gravity is not always possible.
Carrying out calculations and drawing up projects
- Pipe diameter;
- Pipeline slope;
- The degree of filling of the line.
- The rate of water flow through pipes.
In order for the household network to work efficiently, it is important that the fluid flow does not completely fill the pipe. Partial filling allows you to maintain a normal level of ventilation, which ensures the operation of the water seal and the absence of smell in the premises. There are sewerage laying standards that indicate the recommended pipe diameters and normal filling rates.
Advice! Considering that rather large contaminants often get into domestic sewage systems, pipes with a cross section of 50 to 150 mm should be chosen for internal networks. Large diameter pipes are used for the riser and outlet from the toilet, smaller ones can be used for outlets from sinks and showers.
It is very important to correctly calculate the slope of the sewer in order for the drains to move through the pipes at an optimal (self-cleaning) speed. The fact is that if the slope is too strong, the water will quickly leave, not having time to wash off coarse pollution, and at a slow flow rate, solid inclusions will have time to precipitate.
Advice! For pipes with a cross section of 50 mm, the optimal speed for the movement of wastewater is 0.9 m / s, it can provide a slope of 3 cm per meter of pipe length.
Installation work
After completing the design and drawing up diagrams, you can start sewerage in the house.
Construction of internal networks
Internal networks, that is, sewerage wiring in a private house, performs the function of collecting wastewater from each plumbing fixture, transporting them to the riser and removing them from the house to the outer part of the system.
Pipes in the house can be laid open or closed. So, when laying sewers in a frame house, pipes are most often laid secretly, in cavities under the finishing floor, in partitions and walls. In wooden and stone houses, hidden laying is more difficult to implement; niches and boxes have to be specially constructed to mask pipes.
Advice! When planning to conduct a hidden installation of pipes, one should not forget about the need for access hatches to clean the system in case of blockage. Such hatches must be installed when installing a sewer riser.
If the internal sewerage device assumes the presence of complex schemes in which the drains cannot move by gravity, then the installation of a fecal pump for pumping wastewater should be provided. This can happen if the wastewater intake point is located below the entry point to the riser or the water intake points are at a significant distance from each other and it is not possible to withstand the required slope of the pipeline.
If it is impossible to install pumps, it is necessary to plan the installation of two independent risers and, accordingly, the installation of two septic tanks. This option is one of the most expensive, but in some cases you have to resort to it.
Construction of external networks
The sewerage device in a country house is not limited to the installation of internal wiring, it is also necessary to build an external network. External networks are used to transport wastewater from the output from the house to the septic tank or the point of entry into the central sewer pipe. Here are the basic rules for sewerage:
- For external networks, cast iron, asbestos-cement, ceramic or plastic pipes should be used. The latter option is most often used today, since the pipes are affordable and easy to install. For external networks, pipes made of polyethylene, PVC or polypropylene can be used. Pipes with a corrugated surface withstand high loads well.
Advice! If the pipes are laid to a depth less than the depth of freezing of the soil in the area, it is worthwhile to provide for additional pipe insulation if the sewer is supposed to be used all year round.
- Pipes are laid in specially prepared ditches. The depth of the trenches is not a normalized value and is determined depending on the local climate, the quality characteristics of the soil and the distance from the house to the septic tank. In some cases, it is advisable to use pipe insulation.
- If a gravity system is supposed to be installed, then it is necessary to maintain the optimal slope of the sewer in a private house.
- The pipes are laid on a shock-absorbing cushion of sand and gravel, it is built at the bottom of the ditch, not forgetting to compact the material well.
- Sewer pipes must be laid lower in level than water pipes. If this rule is not observed, there is a risk of contaminated liquid entering the drinking water.
- At the places where the pipeline turns and on straight sections, an inspection well must be installed every 20 meters.
- Backfilling of trenches is carried out first with sand, and then with soil. The sand on both sides of the pipes should be well compacted (tamping should be excluded above the pipe itself).
So, in order to equip a private house with a sewer system, you will need to draw up a detailed project, and then install the pipes in accordance with the developed scheme. All these works can be done on your own, but then you will have to spend time studying the building and sanitary standards related to local sewage systems.
