Pit questions

[OurTown]

Our pits are about 90" long by 72" wide and a water depth of about 45". (probably designed to hold 1,250 gallons?) There is a lid that has about a 3' wide by 4' long opening. The floor is poured over it with the opening matching the opening in the lid and a lip formed for the grates. Besides Super Wash built washes are there others that have similarly designed pits? What is the advantage of this design? It looks to me that the only way to get all the sludge out is to pump it because of the overhangs. Also it would seem to take a lot of water to flush out the stagnant water and maybe that is why we sometimes get the pit smell. It can get bad this time of year. Do you guys let your pits fill up to near the drain or do you like to keep them lower? Does the sludge cause some of the smell or is it just the water? (or can the sludge cause the water to smell?) We have some pits that are now getting well over half full now. I called several types of pit cleaning companies and I'm getting all kinds of different thoughts and suggestions. Several septic pumping companies, an environmental waste removal type company, and a dedicated car wash pit cleaning company. I called others but these are the only ones I found so far that say they would do it. Only one price so far.

 

[MEP001]

Besides Super Wash built washes are there others that have similarly designed pits? What is the advantage of this design?

I have seen washes that aren't Super Wash with a similar design. The only advantage I know of is the larger capacity without so much of the bay floor being a grate.

It looks to me that the only way to get all the sludge out is to pump it because of the overhangs. Also it would seem to take a lot of water to flush out the stagnant water and maybe that is why we sometimes get the pit smell. It can get bad this time of year.

Since you can't dig it all out, yes, you'd have to have it pumped to empty them. Some of the local companies here will give you a much better deal if you have them come twice a year instead of calling when you're near full, for example we were calling them at a little over a year and they would charge $3000 to clean everything, but if we scheduled them to just come twice a year it was only $1000 each time. And the pit smell is from stagnant water, in my experience it's much worse after the pits have been cleaned and worst in the least used bays. I bought a bucket of pool tablets and some baling wire and when they start to stink I wrap wire around a tablet and hang it from the grate so it's about 6" below the water surface. After a couple days the smell is gone and doesn't usually come back.

Do you guys let your pits fill up to near the drain or do you like to keep them lower?

I don't like to let them get near full. The higher the mud is, the more will get pulled into the lines and you'll eventually have a clog which is not fun to clear.

The fees are getting so bad (It's $1000 a year just to get it tested now) that most operators I know are buying a Handy Clam and hiring day labor and digging out the pit mud to let it dry on the bay floor for a day before putting it in the dumpster.

 

[Overachiever]

I do what MEP said and shovel out the smelly muck with a handy clam and dry it in one of the bays. I let it dry a lot longer than a day before putting it in the dumpster. I guess I'm not sure what the definition of dry is. It would take forever for it to be beach sand dry but the EPAs already been called on me once doing it this way, one of my customers must not have liked the smell.

One benefit of the way the super wash pits are designed is that you probably didn't need to have a separate oil separator, because the drain elbows down into the mud and the oil should stay at the top of the water, so each pit is a sand and oil separator. If you ever have to pull permits watch out for Water Reclamation swooping in and trying to claim it's not an oil separator and attempt to get you to spend an ungodly amount of money putting one in.

The smell seems to go away once its dry so I guess maybe its the water?

 

[Rudy]

I have had good luck dumping some septic tank enzymes into the pits to get rid of the odor.

This is the worst in the fall when people sneak in and dump the blue water out of their RV's.

 

[OurTown]

I have seen washes that aren't Super Wash with a similar design. The only advantage I know of is the larger capacity without so much of the bay floor being a grate.

Since you can't dig it all out, yes, you'd have to have it pumped to empty them. Some of the local companies here will give you a much better deal if you have them come twice a year instead of calling when you're near full, for example we were calling them at a little over a year and they would charge $3000 to clean everything, but if we scheduled them to just come twice a year it was only $1000 each time. And the pit smell is from stagnant water, in my experience it's much worse after the pits have been cleaned and worst in the least used bays. I bought a bucket of pool tablets and some baling wire and when they start to stink I wrap wire around a tablet and hang it from the grate so it's about 6" below the water surface. After a couple days the smell is gone and doesn't usually come back.

I don't like to let them get near full. The higher the mud is, the more will get pulled into the lines and you'll eventually have a clog which is not fun to clear.

The fees are getting so bad (It's $1000 a year just to get it tested now) that most operators I know are buying a Handy Clam and hiring day labor and digging out the pit mud to let it dry on the bay floor for a day before putting it in the dumpster.

I put in a floating pool tablet holder in each bay with two 3" tablets in each of them. After three days it didn't seem to do much so I put a gallon of pool shock in each bay. That seemed to get rid of most of it. If it starts to come back I will try to put in the max of 5 tablets in each floater to see if that does anything.

 

[OurTown]

I do what MEP said and shovel out the smelly muck with a handy clam and dry it in one of the bays. I let it dry a lot longer than a day before putting it in the dumpster. I guess I'm not sure what the definition of dry is. It would take forever for it to be beach sand dry but the EPAs already been called on me once doing it this way, one of my customers must not have liked the smell.

One benefit of the way the super wash pits are designed is that you probably didn't need to have a separate oil separator, because the drain elbows down into the mud and the oil should stay at the top of the water, so each pit is a sand and oil separator. If you ever have to pull permits watch out for Water Reclamation swooping in and trying to claim it's not an oil separator and attempt to get you to spend an ungodly amount of money putting one in.

The smell seems to go away once its dry so I guess maybe its the water?

We have an oil separator also. Do you guys pump the water off before digging them out?

 

[OurTown]

I have had good luck dumping some septic tank enzymes into the pits to get rid of the odor.

This is the worst in the fall when people sneak in and dump the blue water out of their RV's.

We tried the septic tank enzymes before and it worked if I put enough in but it seemed expensive. Of course now that I think about it the pool tablets are pretty expensive too. Why would people dump their RVs in the fall vs other times of the year? We clean our black water tank out every time at the end of a trip. Of course we dump it at a campground dump station and not at a car wash! I assume it is illegal and you call the cops about that?

 

[txheat]

Smell is usually combination of both sludge and water being stagnant. Use a floating aerator with pump should eliminate the odor but that is overkill over just sludge pit. We have a recycle system so floating aerator is a must.

Doesn't your State regulation allow you to dry sludge in separate shallow pit/ditch?

 

[OurTown]

Also our plan is to dig out and reuse one of these pits for our new auto bay. Is this design okay to use if we will have a reclaim system?

 

[OurTown]

Smell is usually combination of both sludge and water being stagnant. Use a floating aerator with pump should eliminate the odor but that is overkill over just sludge pit. We have a recycle system so floating aerator is a must.

Doesn't your State regulation allow you to dry sludge in separate shallow pit/ditch?

I wonder if we could just put an air line down into the pit with one of those stones like a fish tank has. Maybe only run it when it starts to smell.

 

[Randy]

That bad pit smell is hydrogen sulfide gas from the breakdown of organic matter that’s in the water. Basically the water isn’t being exchanged fast enough and it gets stagnant. The summer time is the worst when it get hot it will really stink. You can add bleach to the tank to kill the smell or use swimming pool bleach pellets in the tank. We go to Dollar tree and buy a few gallons of cheap bleach and add a couple of cups of bleach to the pits when it gets bad. If you dropped an air hose into the oil water separator you’d have suds coming out of the top of the tank. When we clean our tanks we pump out as much water as possible.

 

[MEP001]

We have an oil separator also. Do you guys pump the water off before digging them out?

I've tried to, but between the effort of not plugging the sump with debris and mud and figuring out what to do with the water that's pumped off (A lot of washes have all the water go from pit to pit and into one before it goes out so you always have one you can't pump) it's just easier to put on boots and get splattered.

 

[MEP001]

Doesn't your State regulation allow you to dry sludge in separate shallow pit/ditch?

It's an EPA regulation that pit mud must be dried on an impermeable surface with any water runoff allowed to go into a sanitary sewer system. As long as your separate drying area complies it should be good.

 

[Earl Weiss]

Ditto on the swimming pool tablets. Either suspend them or you can likely leave a couple on the floor where they will get wet and run into the pit.
Liquid bleach works also. Some dollar store bleach doesn't seem to be bleach!

 

[Car_Wash_Guy]

Do you guys have interceptors too? My pits drain into 2 successive soil/oil interceptors which have manhole covers and go down like 16'. My soil interceptor is full.

Do any of you guys use the LONG Handy Clam to pull the mud out of the interceptor? I rented a Vermeer vactor when I first bought the place but wasn't impressed by the performance. The soil was too packed and I had to inject too much water and air to make it pump-able.

 

[OurTown]

It's an EPA regulation that pit mud must be dried on an impermeable surface with any water runoff allowed to go into a sanitary sewer system. As long as your separate drying area complies it should be good.

We were told by one of the septic pumping companies that they would just empty it into a field. We were told by another that they could not do that because they don't have a permit for it. Since we only have three SS bays we do not want to shut one down for a day or more to drain the water off the sludge if we were to do it ourselves.

 

[Car_Wash_Guy]

We were told by one of the septic pumping companies that they would just empty it into a field. We were told by another that they could not do that because they don't have a permit for it. Since we only have three SS bays we do not want to shut one down for a day or more to drain the water off the sludge if we were to do it ourselves.

Maybe they were able to do that because the pumping company owned the land they were dumping it on?

 

[OurTown]

Maybe they were able to do that because the pumping company owned the land they were dumping it on?

Possibly. Could I legally do that as the owner of the car wash and land it is dumped on then?

 

[MEP001]

Not legally, but a lot of people do it.

 

[Rudy]

Be careful.

If you hire a service to pump the pits for you....there's a legal "chain of command" that can ultimately hold you liable. Stated another way....if some company pumps your pits, and does NOT dispose of the sludge legally....YOU can be held liable.

That's why it costs so much to have a reputable company do it for you. They do it right...and then there's a paperwork trail that confirms it if questioned.