Anyone disconnect rain gutters?
 

I'm seeing more houses with the rain gutter downspouts disconnected from the drains that lead to, I assume, the sewer. (here our sewer and storm drains are a combined system.)

Why do this? Does it reduce the chance of your sewer backing up into your basement? Is it really that helpful to collect rainwater for watering, in a PNW climate?

I'm surprised that your area still has combined storm drain/sewers. With the fact that all of that has to go to tertiary treatment, most cities are finding it cheaper to split them.

Here my gutters direct to underground drains which go to the street, which ends up in a storm drain and then into our local creek, about 300 yards from here.

Mine connect to underground pipes that pop up in the yard and flow into my property drainage.

Here in my city they are telling us it is against the law (EPA) to drain rain water into the sewer. They are split here.

They are giving citations when they find this happening.

Personally I think they are doing it to cut costs.

Portland's sewer system has problems. Because stormwater and sewer are combined, the system overflows into the Willamette River during heavy rain. A lot of money has been spent to upgrade the treatment facilities to handle more volume with overflowing, and AFAIK the problem has been somewhat improved. But this doesn't help with the localized problems of old sewer pipes that get overloaded by the volume and back up into basements, etc. Apparently in some areas of the city, homeowners are being offered lower sewer rates if they disconnect their downspouts. I don't recall getting any flyers with this offer so I may not be in such an area. The downside is that you have to find a way and a place on your property to drain rainwater so that it doesn't flood your yard, leak into your basement, etc. I've also thought about, if not full disconnection, using rainbarrels as a "buffer" so that rainwater from a heavy rain gets put into my sewer pipes gradually rather than all at once. Just started thinking about this, so no conclusions yet. I don't particularly want a big rainbarrel sitting in my already teeny-weeny "yard", but I could potentially find a place to hide it on the other side of the fence. Or, I could do nothing - as I've never had a sewer backup. Just searching for info here.

just unhook it from the underground and add a 5' leader away from the house.
you may want to also add a splash block to prevent erosion

Yes. The EPA regulations are that if you have a combined system, EVERYTHING must be treated. This means tertiary treatment. If you separate the storm drains, you can flow them right into the rivers.

Having spent better than 40 years in the bay area, I did not know there was any other kind (other than disconnected).

The water cascades down the downspout and then away from the house (hopefully). It goes into the yard, and what is not used by the plants makes it to the down to the water table or gutter and eventually into the sewer system.

53 bucks per eligible downspout.

Downspout Disconnection

As I understand it, the reason that municipalities are prohibiting storm water discharges from gutters, etc. into the sewer is to prevent "combined sewer overflow" ("CSO") events.

Sewers can be combined (sewage and storm water winding up in the same pipes) or separated (sewage and storm water carried in separate lines). The problem with combined sewers is that all the pipes eventually lead to the water treatment plant. The plant is only designed to handle a certain amount of flow. In the event that there is a heavy rain, more volume has been added to the flow than the treatment plant can handle. When this happens, flow is diverted away from the treatment plant and directly into a body of water. This is a combined sewer overflow. Obviously, CSOs release raw, untreated sewage into waterways.

Portland has had a problem with this over the course of the last 20 years or so. So have many older cities. The EPA frowns on CSOs and raw sewage discharge into waterways. Making homeowners separate their gutter system from the combined sewer reduces the frequency and intensity of CSOs.

Here is a link to a wikipedia page explaining CSOs better than I can: Combined sewer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interesting. My first thought is why would you do that? Sewer gas smells and backup problems would prevent me from doing it. Just like you never tie anything into your household wasteline.

Is it a geographical thing, because I've never seen it in GA, NC or SC. I've seen quite a few homes in coastal SC that don't even have gutters and down spouts.

I've never seen a downspout in Houston go to storm drain. Ours just dump on the ground.

Just to be clear: I mean houses downspouts. The building I work in drains to the storm sewers.

I didn't think that would be a problem in Portland. When I was there it only rained every day from September to July.
Jim

We have a lot of clay soil here, and small lots with, usually, basements. I read the average house roof here sheds 350,000 gallons of water each year. That's probably around 1,000-2,000 gallons per rain day. If I just dumped a few hundred gallons in my yard, it would probably get water-sogged at best, and flooded at worst. Eventually, I'm not sure my basement would stay dry. So I'd have to be sure I have a good place to drain too. I think I'll ask the downspout disconnection folks to come take a look. $53 x 4 isn't enough motivation if there's any significant downside.

Sam wants you to disconnect so then he can then claim erosion problems down the road and charge you for that.

In my neighborhod, all the drains are connected and many of us still get our yards flooded from runoff. I will not disconnect my gutters unless they allow me to pipe the flow directly to the street which drains into Fanno Creek.

You can use rain-chains instead of angled diverters, but either way the roof water ends up somewhere.

Many/most municipalities want to keep surface water from entering the sewer system and causing problems, and/or extra filtering.

Increased flow rate at sewer plants means more cost. They have to treat everything that goes through their treatment. Less flow less cost.

Sanitary sewer and storm sewers should be separate. A storm sewer normally just dumps into a ditch or retention pond.

I've never seen them channeled to the sewers around here; ours simply come off the house and flow about 4' off the footprint into the ground. In the backyard I had to install a french drain across three lots to fix a pooling problem, and that drains into the sewer. Of course, I know of houses within 10 miles who are using former 'Blockbuster Video' billboards as roofing material, so my opinion might not matter much here . . .

Some countries have "brown water" drains - water from sinks and washing machines and etc.

Only "waste water" is collected by honey wagon or sewers. Cheaper still..:eek: