Edit: OK, I am not sure where I got 2.5 gallons from because it turns out standard toilets in the US are 1.6 gallons, as the comment below states. It still seems crazy to me that 1.6 gallons can push waste all the way from the toilet to the sewer. I feel like it would stop at some point and need more water to get to the street.
On a side note, I find plumbing and water treatment fascinating.
In: Engineering
When the sewer from your home its piped having pitch downwards and used a turn at the end of the line rolling into the city sewer to increase speed much like a small waterside. Then the city sewer is pitched as well and has the quantity of everyone else’s house feeding into it as well. In most cases it leads to a pump station then pumped from there to a treatment center.
Everything is sloped down hill until you either get to the treatment plant or a pumping station. More importantly, it doesn’t have to make it all the way there in one go.
The toilet flush has to get the solid waste as far as your main drain to the street – not even to the street sewer, just your main drain is enough. From there, every time you wash your hands or do the dishes or take a shower you are flushing more water down the same drain. Provided it doesn’t manage block up, this will keep things moving enough and once you’re into a main sewer there will be enough flow from different sources that there’s always some water moving through the system
Same way a 3 foot wave can take out a grown man. I mean, it’s just the right amount of everything. Slope, time to travel between wastes, size of everything, and all of the ways to check if there’s a blockage every step of the way. Took years to perfect the system we have now and it’s only getting better.
Your poo basically liquifies from the agitation of going through the toilet trap as well as the typical vertical drop in the sewer pipe drop to your sewer line. Then it makes its way to the larger diameter sewer pipe in your street. All the water from showers, sinks and other sources add to the liquified poo making it a very liquid emulsion. The slope of the sewer line is critical. It should either be a slight slope for laminar flow or a vertical drop. A steep slope like 45 degrees actually causes clogs and is avoided.
Latest Answers