plumbing in a shed, connecting to sewer

Turtle42

I have an old corpo terraced house that was built with just a kitchen sink and a loo, and was extended at some point with a kitchen and washroom. I have a big block shed in my garden, 14 metres from the house which I want to renovate to use as a studio/workshop. The shed is 38sqm but has a certificate of exemption as it was built so long ago. I am a little flummoxed about plumbing it in and wonder if it is worth the effort. I could manage with just plumbing it for greywater and just have a sink and washing machine out there, but it would be so handy to have an extra loo.

My house is terraced and the sewer line runs parallel to the back of the houses and under my and my neighbours extensions. I have an odour-sealed access junction under my kitchen floor. This access junction is about 1.5 metres from the back wall of the extension. There also a 'shore' outside the back door into which the water from the bathroom sink, shower, and gutters drains. This hooks directly into the sewer line, but not at the access junction like the original lines from the kitchen sink and toilet.

I was thinking of using a saniflow system. my options for hooking it up to the sewer is to
A: connect it at the AJ, which involves digging right under the foundations and cutting out a channel in the concrete kitchen floor, and drilling into the side of the old conrete AJ, quite deep down, and then making good the new channel so there are no snags where stuff can stick, like the other connections have. (this would involve lying on the floor fiddling around with rapid setting cement?!) It's a shared line, so would be in use throughout... basically sounds like a total nightmare. I will do a certain amount of rebuilding and extending to this extension in a few years time so could wait until then, but in the meantime I want to crack on with the garden and the thought of planting trees, building beds and laying paving when I might have to dig a trench the length of the garden is wrecking my head logistically.

B: connect to the 'shore'. It has a clay trap, but I could dig this out and connect straight to the sewer, and put in a new trap above/beside for the bathroom greywater? Strictly speaking though I think toilet waste should only connect to the sewer line at an access junction shouldn't it? Are the rules same for saniflow waste? I don't want to risk causing any trouble for my neighbours.

C: Skip the idea of a toilet in the shed and instead have just sink and washing machine, and send the greywater from the shed straight into the shore as is. If so would the pipe have to be buried or could i run it along the garden wall? At a possible 20m from sink to shore would some sort of saniflow system still be reccomended to pump the water?

I want to be sure that hooking up a toilet is not realistically feasable before giving up on the idea, because I can't shake the feeling that it would be a good idea in the long run... we have a small house which we want to stay in for the long haul, only one tiny bathroom with a toilet right next to the kitchen (I am picturing peaceful stink-guilt-free shed-****s!), and the workshop is going to be valuable living space for our growing family and possibly where one of us will work from home. I want to prepare for every eventuality, but then again I don't want to cause myself undue heartache either. Anyway, would making our shed too comfortable AND plumbed for a toilet be changing it use according to the planning authorities?

I have done all renovations so far gleaning valuable info from lurking on forums, and have never asked for advice before, so I don't know how it works, if my question will just be lost in the ether. Any advice or pointers would be very much appreciated!

Calahonda52

So nobody said hello
The issue here is the required slope, if any, of the pipe from the saniflow rig in the shed.
In theory they will pump up to 100m horizontally and 5 m vertically.
I would prefer a slope of say 1 in 40, which means in you case a drop of c 500mm
or for a slope of 1:60 a drop of 333mm
so it depends how deep the invert level in the "shore" is?

I would forget about digging up the kitchen

I would also like a ventilation stack on the line somewhere.

http://www.housing.gov.ie/sites/default/files/migrated-files/en/Publications/DevelopmentandHousing/BuildingStandards/FileDownLoad%2C1649%2Cen.pdf

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056431637

Turtle42

Hello! Thanks for the reply! I was wondering about ventilation actually, there is no ventilation into the sewer anywhere on my property... I wonder would it be somewhere up the line, at the end of the terrace maybe? I have noticed the very odd time that the water level is low in the toilet, but no big problems with smells or gurgling noises.

That building standards link looks like some good bedtime reading! I'll see if it helps, and then I'll sketch up my plan and post it here to see if anyone spots a problem. It will be a couple of years before I renovate the shed but I'm planting the garden this year so it would be good to get the pipe buried first.