Danger of Flood Water?

[RenaissanceBiker]

I would think that anything metal should be okay. Fabric like back packs? Might be cleaned but also might get damaged by bleach. Or possible that the bleach does not quite reach everything. Some foam like materials might not get completely saturated depending on how they get immersed. Not sure how the bleach would alter the ability of the water to reach things. Does bleach count as a surfactant?

Wood might not give up all that it absorbs. Might get all the germs and could still end up with smells you don't want from either bleach or the water itself.

That you might get all the germs and still end up with smells is a good reason to part with the fabrics as well. Hopefully your flood insurance will pay for it.

Anyone who has ever had a dog or child has known the joy that is an unexpected pile of feces that has long since crusted onto whatever it was originally placed upon. You don't tear out the carpet to get rid of it, you go, "Ew," then you clean it up and move on with your day. I realize that the scale of this is different, but there is nothing in the rawest of raw sewage that could contaminate smooth metal or glazed ceramic enough that a thorough cleaning and drying wouldn't fix it. Fabrics, if they can be cleaned, same thing. Poopy mud is gross, but it's not radioactive waste.

Bleach, heat, and forgetting that it soaked in the neighbor's used kielbasa should fix your problems.

Having a dog poop on your living room carpet isn't the same as then mixing that poop in a jar of water containing other contaminants and then pouring that mixture back onto the carpet and letting it sit for a day or so. Most people would replace the carpet after that. Most people probably need to replace their old carpet even without the flood so it's a good excuse to do it.

After all of this but before beginning repairs to the space, I'd be looking at how to prevent the problem ever again. Seal off gravity drain and have two sump pumps (never neglect a backup on critical systems!) discharging into the sewer at a point higher than the flood level, or better yet to the surface away from the foundation. If there's a bathroom down there, a similar setup with a vault/sewage pump discharging into a line a few feet above ground level (in a manner that it cannot siphon back) will save the day.?

As the resident JREF sewer expert and Ponylandistan Minister of Poo, I feel it is my duty to address the highlighted portion of your post. DO NOT EVER DO THIS! Sanitary sewers were not designed for this. An 8-inch pipe at the proper grade can serve more than 200 houses but can be overwhelmed by just four sump pumps. Relatively clean groundwater should discharge onto the surface so that it drains away into the storm sewers. You might be able to discharge your groundwater into the sewers in such a way that it does not flow back through your system but you will be responsible for flooding your neighbor's basement downstream of you.

So, the flood water has high levels of bacteria. That's bad. (I was wading in the stuff for probably two hours. Maybe not a good idea.)

The infection danger comes from that flood water contacting even a minor cut and also from possible inhalation or ingestion. You can't see through it so you might bang your ankle on a sharp piece of metal or glass while submerged and then you are in trouble. Don't wade into water higher than your boots. I keep hand sanitizer in my truck for those times when I may come in contact with sewage. Even then, when we break for lunch I go to the nearest fast-food joint. I go straight to the bathroom, wash my hands, piss, then wash my hands again.

I know that you are talking about the flood water in a residence but there is another danger when walking in flooded streets. Excess water pressure in the sewers can float a manhole lid off the frame. When the pressure subsides but before the flood recedes, there is a danger that walking in water not deeper than your boots can result in you falling into an open manhole. I am aware of one fatality that occurred this way.

 

[RedPillNeo]

As the resident JREF sewer expert and Ponylandistan Minister of Poo, I feel it is my duty to address the highlighted portion of your post. DO NOT EVER DO THIS! Sanitary sewers were not designed for this. An 8-inch pipe at the proper grade can serve more than 200 houses but can be overwhelmed by just four sump pumps.

I agree, but given that his basement currently drains to the sanitary sewer by gravity, this is the best way to reengineer such a drain to prevent a recurrance.

Even in areas served by good stormdrain systems, during storms, sewer flow increases to the point of overwhelming treatment capacity, so excess flows over a weir to the outfall untreated. This is one reason why LA area beaches are closed after storms till bacteria counts go back down.

How does an 8 inch pipe serving 200 houses hold up during synchronous selection, AKA the "Super Bowl Flush?"

ETA: Reminded me of a situation that can arise with Airstream trailers and other RVs. Some "black tanks" are equipped with a rinse fitting that can be connected to a fresh water hose. Sometimes this is mistaken for the "city water" connection, resulting in an overflow that is not always discovered right away, and what Airstream calls a regrettable mess.

 

[RenaissanceBiker]

I agree, but given that his basement currently drains to the sanitary sewer by gravity, this is the best way to reengineer such a drain to prevent a recurrance.

Not so. A backflow preventer is the best way to keep excessive water from the sewer from entering a basement through a floor drain. It is a simple check valve that would be held shut by the hydrostatic pressure of the sewer. The sump pump would then never be called upon to pump sewage. It would only have to pump groundwater out of the building. If you need to reengineer your sewer connection to eliminate basement backups, the backflow preventer is the way to go. It keeps sewage out of your basement without endangering your neighbor's basement.

Even in areas served by good stormdrain systems, during storms, sewer flow increases to the point of overwhelming treatment capacity, so excess flows over a weir to the outfall untreated. This is one reason why LA area beaches are closed after storms till bacteria counts go back down.

Each time that happens it is a violation of the Clean Water Act. Treatment plants all over the country are being retrofitted to treat these wet weather flows. Some cities have resorted to deep tunnels to capture and store the excess flow volume until it can be safely treated. Others are using high rate treatment trains that only activate during wet weather events. Regardless of their wet weather treatment strategy, every one of them would ask you not to contribute to the problem by connecting a sump pump, downspout or yard drain to the sanitary sewers. Wet weather flows in sanitary sewers have been the primary focus of my professional engineering career for over twenty years.

How does an 8 inch pipe serving 200 houses hold up during synchronous selection, AKA the "Super Bowl Flush?"

My good friend Pat Stevens has written a series of articles on sewer sociology. While the following article doesn't mention the Super Bowl specifically, it does address college football games and the flow in sanitary sewers.
http://www.sewerhistory.org/grfx/misc/SewerSociology.pdf
Basically, the Super Bowl halftime flush is a real observable phenomenon but it has never overwhelmed the sewers like a 2-inch rain can.

 

[Meadmaker]

Basically, the Super Bowl halftime flush is a real observable phenomenon but it has never overwhelmed the sewers like a 2-inch rain can.

We had 2 inches of rain in 30 minutes, in the midst of 5 inches of rain over the course of six hours.

No one around here must have had anything to prevent the backflow, because the piles of trash were amazingly high, and not a single house was without such a pile.

And lots of people, including me, weren't insured, and many who were insured were surprised to find out how limited the coverage was.

Looking back, I don't know if I would have done anything differently. I know it was dangerous, but some of that stuff I saved was stuff I am darned glad I saved. I wish I could put some real level on the danger. I haven't seen articles about a rise in hospital admissions, although there have been some about an increase in various allergic reactions.

 

[RenaissanceBiker]

I was living and working in Louisville when we got 14 inches of rain in 26 hours. I got to see that kind of damage up close. I researched flooding in school and now I make computer models of storm and sanitary sewers. I'll never buy a house even half way down a hill.

 

[Meadmaker]

I was living and working in Louisville when we got 14 inches of rain in 26 hours. I got to see that kind of damage up close. I researched flooding in school and now I make computer models of storm and sanitary sewers. I'll never buy a house even half way down a hill.

Yikes. That's a lot of rain. What did us in wasn't the amount, but the rate. The basement started flooding at 6:30. By midnight it was drained. In between there was thirty inches of sewer water.

Tonight I succumbed to paranoia. I was out working late on a project. I came home to be informed that my son (teenaged) had a sore throat and was sick to his stomach, and had just gotten out of bed (at 9:40). Instead of being calm, rational, and waiting till morning, I decided it would be best to see a doctor tonight, and since the Urgent Care facility closed at 10:00, let's leave now. (I wasn't quite paranoid enough to do an emergency room visit.) I figured if it was a bacterial infection, I wanted to hit it right away.


My son was disgusted. My doctor amused. He sent us away with no prescriptions. I feel slightly silly......but I think I would do the same thing again, and still feel silly.

 

[CORed]

If there's cholera in Michigan, which I doubt. Hepatitis A might be a different story.

Poo happens. I have an unusual perspective on this. I have a pretty strong immune system - maybe too strong - and I figure it's good to give it a workout now and then. In the OP it certainly sounds like many reasonable precautions are being followed.

ETA: If you actually make mead, who knows - this could be a coveted secret ingredient - microbes can be our friends.

I would think that Hepatitis A, Giardia and Cryptosporidium would be more likely than cholera or typhoid. Those are not normally life threatening, but they're not a whole lot of fun, either.

I would think if you clean and disinfect items for which it's possible (non-pourous items, or fabric items that can be run through a washing machine) and throw away the rest, you'd be reasonably safe. Of course wash hands after handling anything contaminated, and shower if more than hands are contaminated. I doubt that upholstered furniture, mattresses or anything like that would be salvageable (or that you'd want to even try). Drywall, if any, will of course have to be replaced.

 

[RedPillNeo]

A backflow preventer is the best way to keep excessive water from the sewer from entering a basement through a floor drain. It is a simple check valve that would be held shut by the hydrostatic pressure of the sewer.

This solution still has basement water running into the sanitary sewer, and can be defeated by any small piece of debris preventing the valve from closing completely.

If my house was subject to risk of recurring sewage backup, I'd want a completely foolproof system, which to me means pumping from the basement to a siphon-proof discharge higher than the ground-floor toilet bowl/bathtub rim. Sewer water to the sewer, drain water to appropriate discharge point.

There are also "basement toilets" that use a curved pipe up to ground sewer level, with a water jet to macerate and blow the sewage up from basement level; these are lower than toilet/bathtub level and vulnerable to siphoning.

I'm sure Meadmaker will agree, this should only ever happen 0 or maybe 1 time per entire history of a given basement.

Thanks RenBiker for the expert info on sewers.

 

[RenaissanceBiker]

Now that I think of it, I've never lived in a house with a basement. I've owned two houses with crawl spaces and my current house is on a slab. It's also on top of the highest hill in the neighborhood and 28 feet higher than the nearest large dam (11.5 miles away).

 

[Akhenaten]

There are all sorts of things lurking in flood water. I'm not sure that bleach will get rid of all of them.

 

[roger]

Plumbers and sanitations work with this stuff every day. My next day neighbor is a plumber. He doesn't throw away his clothes and tools at the end of the day, he just washes them, so far as I know.

 

[Beerina]

Anyone who has ever had a dog or child has known the joy that is an unexpected pile of feces that has long since crusted onto whatever it was originally placed upon.

Did you know piles of desiccated cat poop on the basement floor will, after several years, collapse into a dust pile at a fairly standard angle of repose ^WP ?

 

[Frozenwolf150]

Plumbers and sanitations work with this stuff every day. My next day neighbor is a plumber. He doesn't throw away his clothes and tools at the end of the day, he just washes them, so far as I know.

On the other hand, I'm sure he doesn't rub his face all over them either.

 

[DGM]

This solution still has basement water running into the sanitary sewer, and can be defeated by any small piece of debris preventing the valve from closing completely.

In my state it is illegal to connect a sump-pump used for clearing ground water to the sanitary sewer. This includes gravity drains in basements, garages and downspouts (even with no pump). I can't imagine what you propose as being allowed in any form. The back-flow valve is not perfect but, it is the only allowed method.

 

[casebro]

I know a sanitation worker that actually had to swim across a pond. He back stroked back. No problems.

They don't even get extra vaccinations.

What do you do if your get some goo on your hands in the bathroom? You don't cut them off and throw them away, you wash them.

Staph is everywhere, Giardia already infects 80% of the world's population. Toxoplasmosis hardly effects adults.

On the other hand, how good is you insurance? Flood coverage? Lots of new stuff?

 

[Meadmaker]

I have done a fair amout of research i.e. googling. Here's what I think I know at this point.

I may have underestimated the initial danger. I basically wrote it all off as if it were nothing, but it seems there must have been some danger.

On the other hand, I think the long term danger, including the "throw it all out" recommendations, are way overblown. In particular, I've been looking at survivability of pathogens outside of a human host. From what I've read, darned near nothing lives more than a month outside a host. (Exception: Anthrax. I'm not worried.) Darned near nothing survives thorough drying, either, and darned near nothing survives contact with bleach.

So, if I take that hockey equipment, soak it in bleach, and then leave it sit for a month until I plan on using it, the chance of me being infected is so close to zero we are in lottery ticket range.

Likewise, all of that furniture was definitely not a health hazard, at least long term. Sitting on it, or wearing clothes that were in the sewer backup, in the weeks following the flood might be small risk, but given time and dryness, it will revert to zero risk. (Some of it would still smell bad, which would be cause to discard it, but it wouldn't be a health hazard.)

At least, that's what I infer from what I have read lately.

 

[RenaissanceBiker]

Plumbers and sanitations work with this stuff every day. My next day neighbor is a plumber. He doesn't throw away his clothes and tools at the end of the day, he just washes them, so far as I know.

He doesn't put his clothes in a bucket of sewage, let them soak for a few days and then try to wash them. There's the difference between getting some on your jeans and having your jeans soak in flood water for an extended period. You can wash and disinfect them. You might get all the smell out, but in the end you'll have expended a lot of time and effort to get something that's still not as good a new.

I know a sanitation worker that actually had to swim across a pond. He back stroked back. No problems.

HAD to? I call shenanigans on that. No supervisor that I know would require such a thing. Perhaps he fell in and the ladder was on the other side. In order for that to happen, a serious safety violation would have already occurred.

They don't even get extra vaccinations.

Why should they? If they do their job right they won't ever come in contact with sewage.

What do you do if your get some goo on your hands in the bathroom? You don't cut them off and throw them away, you wash them.

Again, that's not the same thing as soaking in sewage and/or floodwater for a prolonged period of time.

Staph is everywhere, Giardia already infects 80% of the world's population. Toxoplasmosis hardly effects adults.

On the other hand, how good is you insurance? Flood coverage? Lots of new stuff?

Most people don't understand how little flood coverage they have. Flooding causes more property damage each year than tornados, earthquakes, and fires combined. That's why insurance companies want more to cover damage due to it.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

In my city the storm drains and sanitary sewer are separate subsystems. How common is that? Are combined sewers really widespread, or only in older parts of the country or what?

 

[RedPillNeo]

What do you do if your get some goo on your hands in the bathroom? You don't cut them off and throw them away, you wash them.

Again, that's not the same thing as soaking in sewage and/or floodwater for a prolonged period of time.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There's a definite hierarchy here.

Your own goo < someone else's goo < EVERYONE else's goo!

 

[RenaissanceBiker]

In my city the storm drains and sanitary sewer are separate subsystems. How common is that? Are combined sewers really widespread, or only in older parts of the country or what?

Separate storm and sanitary sewers is the design standard now. Combined was the design standard up to the early 20th century. The idea was that the occasional storm would clean your sewers out for you. Once wastewater treatment became a requirement the combined sewers became a big headache for municipalities that had them. New sewers would be separate but existing combined systems were a problem. The solution was diversion. Sewers were constructed to take dry weather flow to treatment plants. A series of diversion structures (of varying complexity) were constructed near each outfall. Usually a small dam would divert flow to the new sewer. During wet weather the flows would simply overtop the dam and continue out to the receiving waters as they once did. Engineering studies and computer models determined how high to make the dam so that it would capture the first flush of polluted water. Efforts to separate combined sewers have proven to be extremely expensive and complicated because of the amount of underground infrastructure that we have to work around (water, gas, electric, telephone/data). FSM help you if you damage a nearby fiber-optic line.

ETA: The short answer is that combined sewers are common in the older parts of older cities.