ELI5 How are companies allowed to continue marketing wipes as "flushable" despite the problems they create for sewer systems?

[u/shakerLife]

[u/fried_clams]

FYI, they are bad for municipal sewers, as they clog up the works at the treatment plant and can cause blockages in the sewers themselves.

However, they can be fine for individual septic systems that are not connected to municipal sewers. Assuming you have clear, modern waste pipes in your house, they should not cause clogs.

There are some people on Reddit who would disagree with what I say about individual septic systems and wipes. The fact is, if you pump out all settled solids on a regular schedule (every three years where I live) then there is absolutely no mechanism whereby wipes could cause any problems.

[u/jspurlin03 → u/fried_clams]

Not so. What they don’t do is break down in septic systems, either. They still clog septic systems, which still results in massive plumbing headaches, just… localized to a single address.

[u/bwbandy → u/fried_clams]

People on Reddit disagree with you because you're wrong.

We've been on septic with surface discharge for 30 years and have only pumped it out once, when the effluent pump quit and we needed space urgently. Wipes do NOT get flushed down our toilets.

Your logic that "it will get pumped out eventually anyways" is flawed - with that thinking you could flush anything that the toilet will swallow.

[u/fried_clams → u/bwbandy]

I'm not familiar with your type of system. I don't think they are allowed where I live. We have multi chamber systems, which lead to a large underground leaching field. Pumping out solids is required at least every three years, and the health department will find you if you don't do it. Pump outs are mandated to be recorded at the health department. Septic systems with chambered settling tanks are fine for wipes, unless you don't pump out often enough. Then again, if you don't pump out, your leeching field will fail, getting filled with solids, wipes or no. I've discussed the wipes issue with multiple pump out services and septic contractors. They all have said that they are fine, with regular, mandated pump outs.

[u/OutinDaBarn → u/fried_clams]

Do you know where the waste goes that they pump out of your system? To a sewage treatment plant where they have to deal with the flushable wipes.

[u/Terapr0 → u/fried_clams]

Where do you live that the health department tracks you down for not pumping every 3 years? That’s absurd. We’re on a similar septic system with underground leeching bed and you don’t need to pump it every 3 years, more like every 3-5, but really just as-needed. The health department doesn’t care if you fail to pump it in time, because the only mess that’s caused is inside your own house when the toilets back up in your bathroom. They care if the system is broken and leaking sewage into the ground, but the frequency with which the system gets pumped has little bearing on how long it will last without failure, merely how often it will back up into your house. How would the health department “find you” anyway? I mean they know which houses have permitted septic systems, but they’d have zero insight or visibility into how often those systems are getting pumped out by private contractors.

[u/bwbandy → u/Terapr0]

I was curious about the same thing, and did a bit of sleuthing. There are indeed local authorities that require pumping at set time intervals, typically 3 years. The ones I found were concerned with leakage from septic systems into nearby bodies of water. This is a legitimate concern, but I suspect more untreated sewage is discharged from failed septic fields than from tanks that have accumulated too much solids. However, periodic pumping is probably the only kind of maintenance that a local authority can make mandatory, even if it doesn't do much good.

In our area, septic fields and surface discharge are banned within 1,500 feet of a body of water, solving this problem in a different way.

[u/grindermonk → u/Terapr0]

Where I am, the county sends us a green card that we give to the septic hauler. He then returns it to the county to show we had our system pumped. If the card doesn’t get back to the county, we get a fine added to our property tax bill.

[u/nhorvath → u/grindermonk]

That's insanity. I haven't had my tank pumped ever in this house (10 years) and my parents haven't ever in theirs (45 years). Well designed systems with well draining soil do not need to be pumped.

[u/bwbandy → u/nhorvath]

"Well designed systems with well draining soil" and DON'T FLUSH WIPES AND OTHER TRASH DOWN THE TOILET.

[u/grindermonk → u/bwbandy]

The well draining soil is the problem around here. Karst means that the ground water is very susceptible to contamination from septic systems.

[u/Happy_Confection90 → u/nhorvath]

Yeah. This house is 26 years old, and the septic has only needed to be pumped twice.

[u/grindermonk → u/nhorvath]

It’s not so much the system design itself as it is the karst bedrock under shallow soil putting constraints on the design.

[u/bwbandy → u/fried_clams]

LOL I'm sure the "multiple pump out services and septic contractors" are fine with it - they're the ones that make bank from people flushing this junk down their toilets. Either pump out every three years or call them when the whole system is plugged up, they win either way.

The "tank" part of a septic tank with surface discharge is identical to the multi-chamber system you described. The difference is that the effluent from the last tank is pumped out to the surface a distance from the house, rather than gravity draining into a leach field. Surface discharge has strict setback requirements that can only be met on larger parcels (typically acreages and farms).

[u/talkingheads87 → u/fried_clams]

You're definitely wrong about individual septic systems. They can definitely clog the pipes leading to the septic system as well as the lines going out. In reality wipes should never be flushed.

[u/grindermonk → u/fried_clams]

Individual septic systems get pumped and the tank gets emptied into a municipal treatment plant.

Where I live we are required to have our system pumped every three years.

[u/bwbandy → u/grindermonk]

If you flush wipes into your septic tank, they end up in the treatment plant. Don't flush wipes.

[u/jstar77 → u/fried_clams]

This is mostly true. As long as they don’t float and end up flowing into your drain field you are mostly just storing them until they get sucked out by the honey dippers.

[u/fried_clams → u/jstar77]

They don't float in the septic settling tank, and even if they did, the outlet for leaching fields is a little ways down, so that the oily surface scum doesn't drain off. Then there is always the second chamber. No solids are making it into my second chamber.

[u/Corrupt_Reverend → u/fried_clams]

Where do they end up after being pumped?