drain problem

[BJs Welding]

 HI I am have trouble with my kitchen sink and basment floor drain they seem to be hooked together, but seperate from the main line that the rest of the house uses. The kitchen sink exits the house at a different location than the main line.   I ran the water at the kitchen and it backs up through the floor drains but rest of the house drains fine. Can the kitchen sink run into the main line that the rest of the house uses or will the soaps bother the septic bacteria? I have ran a 100' rotor rooter through the floor drains and it didnt help actualy made it worse. It still drains a little so i was going to run some acid down them

[Stuart Meade]

Hello, BJ.

Your kitchen sink generates lots of waste water and needs to be routed to your septic tank.  Reasonable amounts of soaps should not be a problem for a properly sized septic tank.  It is designed to accept this stuff!  Don’t, however, use anti-bacterial soaps.  Some contain an anti-bacterial agent that will not bio-degrade in your septic tank – Don’t do it.

How did your sink end up getting routed somewhere separate from the rest of the home’s waste water?  Let’s take a look at two different scenarios.
 
1 - The kitchen was a part of a house addition – and probably on a slab.  The person plumbing the new sink said, “Gee, this is going to be really hard to connect this to the main house sewer, let’s just run it out and connect a tile (drain pipe) in the yard.” 

2 - Whoever originally installed the plumbing decided that it was not necessary for the sink water to go to the septic tank.  They thought it would be better to run it to a tile instead.

Instead of a tile (that runs off property), they may have installed a Dry Well or small absorption field not far from the house.   The septic installer is long gone and there are no records of this mini-system.  When these absorption fields fail, one or two fixtures (or bathrooms) in the house back-up, leaving people wondering what happened.

If you really want to know, you will need to do some exploratory digging in the yard.

Do whatever you can to re-route the kitchen water to the rest of the house plumbing.  You may need to utilize a small ejector pump/pit.

Questions:

Where does the rest of the kitchen water go?

How about the laundry water?  Does it mix with the foundation water in the basement?  If so, these will also need to be separated.

[LM Excavating]

It's quite common for older homes to have ONLY the bathrooms and sometimes ONLY the toilets going to the actual Septic System.

I have combined these lines outside the home and inside the home depending on which was easier.

Odds are once you get everything combined you will have problems with the Septic System. Most older Septic Systems are quite small compared to today's standard plus they are old and used up.

So in short I think you are just starting to see the head of a big Monster and it will want some $$$$ to make it go away.

You may have the line professionally cleaned they may have bigger better toys for the job, this isn't the proper fix but may get you by until you can get a proper fix.

[Toxic Avenger]

The following should NEVER be connected into your septic system:

1)  Floor or foundation drains
2)  Roof drains
3)  Pool drains

I can't count the number of homes I have seen them run their washing machine drain into their sump pit in the basement.  This is a NO-NO!  The washing machine should drain into your septic tank, but the sump pump should drain elsewhere away from the absorption field if possible.  Running ground water and runoff into your septic system puts undue stress on the system, and this water does not need to be treated like human waste does, so it can be run elsewhere.