Floor Drain

"Shawn" wrote: Is there anything I can pour in this thing that will not evaporate away so quickly? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ My suggestion: Pour in water in the usual manner, and then add a layer of some kind of silicone oil. This will not evaporate as rapidly. Or a heavy oil of any kind, which has a lower vapor pressure than water.

How about floating (fill with water first) some varnish or lacquer on the water. That would form a skin - if it were full across and with a little depth. The water and air would absorb the dryers and a thin air tight layer would be left. (I would think).

My guess the plummer supply (hardware store) has something like it for drains. Otherwise the paint section does. :-)

One wouldn't want to have a hard shell - but enough to hold - bu the weight above from a flood would bust through.

Maybe experiment in a glass jar first.

Martin

Check to be sure that the vent is open. Sometimes if a strong vacuum develops, the water can be sucked out of the traps.

Otherwise I would suggest you just keep dumping a bucket of water in the trap periodically.

We actually have this problem at work, the floor drain in the mens room at the end of the run has the trap sucked dry on occasion. Then the fumes that emerge will definitely curl your hairs in short order. I've pointed this out to the facilities folks but they never seem to fix it. Aside from dumping a trashcan of water into it, the only thing I could think of doing would be to light off the sewer gas coming out, and blow a few manhole covers off, to get some attention to the matter.

Jim

Floor drains are not premisable in a shop this is called a injection well i did not do a search but der looks for that sort of thing i think the best thing to do is get it out of there if it is a comercial shop sapose something gets down there not to be ????????

Floor drains all called class5 injection well tell your local dep you have one . So when some nasty shit goes down thay no were to send the bill

What's that Lassie? Timmie fell down the injection well?

Gary

Build some kind of a float that will stop up the hole when no water is in it. I had one like that in the cellar of a home I had, found a rubber ball that fit inside. When the water filled the drain the ball would float and open the drain. gary

Maybe the "Blue Seal" stuff they use in waterless urinals would stay there longer than water?

I haven't encountered one of those "No Flush" urinals yet, but I'm guessing they'll be pretty popular in a while, since the pundits are telling us that a shortage of watere will be our next big crisis, and the way my town's water and sewer rates have skyrocketed in the last ten years would confirm that.

Jeff

Try mineral oil from your local pharmacy. I used it on a toilet that was left idle for months and it worked well. No stink or stain.

Is that the same as baby oil? Oh and for the question of the legality of a floor drain in a shop, you caught me sneaking in non-metal working topics here. It's in my woodshop, in my basement of my home. It is air conditioned (when i'm not working there) and therefore quite dry.

Shawn

I think the objection being voiced thought your drain simply emptied into the gravel at the base of the foundation. Your comments in the original post made it apparent to me that it actually is connected to the house drain line - or else how else would sewer gas be coming out of it?

Jim

The link didn't work for me, so I may be suggesting something stupid that would have been explained had it worked. Some floor drains are tapped for a pipe plug on the inlet side. If you don't use the drain routinely, you may be able to plug it and end, permanently, the problem of sewer gasses filling your room. The negative would be that you'd have to work through what ever water accumulated should you ever need to open the drain for any reason. The way you describe your operation, that shouldn't be much of a problem.

Good luck!

Harold

I'd use RV antifreeze (the type used in the potable water system). It won't evaporate. I use it in the winter time to keep the deep sink drain in my garage from freezing in the winter time.....

Dave Young

Can you hook up a trap primer? That will solve it permanently. They use them on commercial floor drains, the fitting has a 1/2" NPT tapped plug on the side for it. Go back to Plumbingdirect.com and search for the Zurn FD2321-NH2 drain - or any of the others marked "Light Commercial".

They run a 1/2" copper pipe from the trap to under the nearest sink (before the floor is poured), and hook the trap primer to the water line with a shutoff valve. Every time you flush a toilet or run water in the building, the line pressure drops - and the trap primer automagically spits a few drops of water into the floor drain trap.

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I'll hopefully remember that those exist if I ever pour a floor with a drain in it. Unfortunately, this isn't really a good option for my drain.

Shawn

Metal interface to the drain pipe. :-)

Link worked 19:24 PDT 14 Aug 2004 :-) Nice 3-D drain picture. Martin

Somewhere (who knows) I've seen a "check valve" made for floor drains that acts with some kind of a spring mechanism that seals the floor drain when not being used.... but allows water (or whatever) to go down the drain when necessary.... I never bought one, but it basically amounts to a "one-way valve" that is mounted under the perforated "lid" for the floor drain.... you might want to look for something like that. HTH Ken.

Basically a ping pong ball that seals the pipe, but floats off the pipe when needed. You might be able to accomplish the same thing with some form of light hollow ball. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Keep the whole world singing . . . . DanG (remove the sevens) snipped-for-privacy@7cox.net

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