This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Gray Water diverters, Home Energy, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
SIZING A LEACH PIT and CALCULATING NUMBER OF DRYWELLS
Residential home sewage system (septic) leach fields, roof gutter runoff, driveway and yard drainage are common applications for drywells. It is not necessary to have multiple drywells, just larger holes (leach pit) filled with more gravel (3/4 inch to 1-1/2 inch crushed aggregate size is the norm). You can not have too large of a leaching pit when disposing of large amounts of water. It is always wise to install at least two drywells in series, as per the sketch above. This arrangement allows the first drywell to act as a settling basin for dirt, leaves, and other particulates, ensuring a long lasting system by keeping the second drywell free of debris. Units can be stacked to increase the amount of surge potential for storm or sewage water disposal. The “capacity” of a drywell system is only limited by the size of the gravel filled hole you put it in (leaching pit). The drywell itself is about fifty gallons dry (surge potential), but this quickly disperses into the surrounding leach pit. Your local building department sets the equations (code) used to determine leach pit size for septic systems and yard drainage. A rule of thumb in well percolating soil is about 200 gallons per day, every day, with 1 foot of gravel under and around it. With gutter and downspout disposal, a two inch rainfall is the standard normally used, but that will naturally vary with local weather patterns. Two inches of rain equates to 1.25 gallons per square foot of roof surface area (1 gallon being 231 cubic inches, 1 cubic foot (1728 cubic inches) being 7.48 gallons). A 1000 square foot roof, generating about 1250 gallons of water in a two inch rainfall, would, as a very general rule of thumb, require a gravel filled hole (leaching pit) large enough to hold that amount of water when empty. Certainly knowing the actual percolation rate of the soil is the only way of being certain, but a 4′ by 4′ by 12′ long leach pit can be estimated to disperse about 1250 gallons of rainwater in most soils. A hole this size could use at least 100 gallons of surge (2 drywells) – more in slower percolating soils where you may wish to stack them, as pictured below.
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