Subject: Re: [Shop-talk] Shop-talk Digest, Vol 8, Issue 156

From: Mark Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 12:03:58 -0700

If this is a weekend retreat and summer kind of place you would not need 
to be able to perc the whole 25 folks all the time.  It would take a 
larger holding tank, perhaps two cascading tanks, and a reasonable leech 
field.  If it is your 'go to the hills society has collapsed' full time 
place then you would want more continuous support (and probably a local 
source of power).  And you'd also want to really really vet those 24 
other people well.
For reference my leech field is for 5 bedrooms, which the county 
calculates as supporting 10 people.  It has 356 linear feet of leech 
pipe and a 1500 gallon tank.  Pipes are 8 feet apart, so roughly 3000 
square feet of leech field.
This went in in Sonoma County in 2005; I know the codes have changed 
since then (if you care). More details?  Just ask.  HTH.

Regards,

Mark Miller
[email-masked]

On 10/29/2014 11:00 AM, Jim Franklin <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Some friends and I are very casually talking about building a place in
> the woods that'd hold about 25 people. The land is completely
> undeveloped but power and wells are on the adjacent property so it's
> developable. At 75 gals/person/day we're looking at almost 2000
> gals/day. Any idea what it'd cost for a system like this? This'd be in
> the Sierra foothills of CA but I can extrapolate from your economy to
> this one:-)
>
> (lets assume average perc rates, access difficulty etc)
>
> thanks,
> jim
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From: Jim Franklin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 15:34:54 -0400

Definitely the former :-)  But we'd all be up there at once a few times 
a year, with lots of eating and drinking and kitchen use, so the peak 
load of the septic needs to be high. Trying to get a sense of what it'd 
cost to develop the land. The well and septic are the biggest unknowns.

jim

On 10/29/2014 3:03 PM, Mark Miller wrote:
> If this is a weekend retreat and summer kind of place you would not 
> need to be able to perc the whole 25 folks all the time.  It would 
> take a larger holding tank, perhaps two cascading tanks, and a 
> reasonable leech field.  If it is your 'go to the hills society has 
> collapsed' full time place then you would want more continuous support 
> (and probably a local source of power).  And you'd also want to really 
> really vet those 24 other people well.
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From: Scott <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 18:29:43 -0400

I'm learning more about wells than I want to know (though I still know 
nearly nothing), but apparently the 'well' itself doesn't need to supply 
so much water--or the size of the pump doesn't vary as much as I thought 
it would. It's the size of the holding tank, and the pump from that tank 
that matters. The idea is that the pump (apparently) will run 
more-or-less constantly filling this monster tank (depending on how much 
water you plan to use). Then you draw down the tank all at once, and the 
pump spends the next two days re-filling it.

Or, when I asked about a well to supply El Shower Maximus at the house, 
he said the well pump itself was fine. There needed to be a bigger tank, 
and bigger lines from that tank, and a pump to pump the water *from* the 
tank, but the same scrawny well pump itself (to the tank) is fine from a 
tiny house up to commercial applications. The tank is a sort 
of...capacitor, I guess. The current supply in can be low. If I got that 
analogy right.

(I chime in because my wife at full capacity will consume more water 
than 25 partiers, easily. What kind of shower needs a 1-inch supply line 
to the fixture?)

Anyway, I wonder if septic tanks are similar. We just replaced ours, and 
the tank is huge now, as are the leach lines. Maybe you just get the 
gigantor tank, and the lines spend a week draining.

On 10/29/2014 3:34 PM, Jim Franklin wrote:
> Definitely the former :-)  But we'd all be up there at once a few 
> times a year, with lots of eating and drinking and kitchen use, so the 
> peak load of the septic needs to be high. Trying to get a sense of 
> what it'd cost to develop the land. The well and septic are the 
> biggest unknowns.
>
> jim
>
>> collapsed' full time place then you would want more continuous 
>> support (and probably a local source of power).  And you'd also want 
>> to really really vet those 24 other people well.

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From: Jim Franklin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 21:01:54 -0400

On 10/29/2014 6:29 PM, Scott wrote:
> Anyway, I wonder if septic tanks are similar. We just replaced ours, 
> and the tank is huge now, as are the leach lines. Maybe you just get 
> the gigantor tank, and the lines spend a week draining. 

Sure, that would work for us, but the next owner may throw a 25 person 
party every day. Needs to be designed for maximum load, which is related 
to the # bedrooms * soil absorption capacity.

We visit a ski lodge every spring and about every other year the tank 
overflows, usually right around the time we're all on the lawn digging 
into dinner[1]...

jim

[1] I typo'd that as donner, which is funny on a few levels given the 
location of the land I'm looking at...
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From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 22:51:12 -0500

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 2:03 PM, Mark Miller
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> If this is a weekend retreat and summer kind of place you would not need to
> be able to perc the whole 25 folks all the time.

Depends on code.  Most places will require you to install septic to
match the capacity of the place. (Because what you build as a one week
a year vacation spot will be the next owner's primary residence.)  If
there are beds for 25, there needs to septic for them, as well.

-- 
David Scheidt
[email-masked]

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From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 23:25:18 -0500

On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 5:29 PM, Scott <[email-masked]> wrote:
> nearly nothing), but apparently the 'well' itself doesn't need to supply so
> much water--or the size of the pump doesn't vary as much as I thought it
> would. It's the size of the holding tank, and the pump from that tank that
> matters. The idea is that the pump (apparently) will run more-or-less
> constantly filling this monster tank (depending on how much water you plan
> to use). Then you draw down the tank all at once, and the pump spends the
> next two days re-filling it.
>
> Or, when I asked about a well to supply El Shower Maximus at the house, he
> said the well pump itself was fine. There needed to be a bigger tank, and
> bigger lines from that tank, and a pump to pump the water *from* the tank,
> but the same scrawny well pump itself (to the tank) is fine from a tiny
> house up to commercial applications. The tank is a sort of...capacitor, I
> guess. The current supply in can be low. If I got that analogy right.
>

This depends on local practice, which depends on local water supply.
If it's easy to bore a well that can deliver large volume, then that's
usually what's done.  (Where I used to live in Indiana, 100 gpm out of
a 5" well was pretty common nominal capacity, though most houses had
lower capacity pumps.)  If it's not, then holding tank and a pump that
runs more or less continuously gets used.  For a typical single family
house, a peak water usage of 600 gallons in two hours is the standard
design goal.  With no storage, that requires a 5 GPM well.  That's
easy in the midwest and much of the east.  In arid areas, or rocky
areas, that can be hard.  With suitable storage, even a 1 gpm well can
provide that.

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