Macerator Toilet Waste Pipe Issue

Does this have a pump?

If the waste pipe goes up and then somehow through the house and hits outside not in the ground you have nice problem. Yes the shade would freezing in the winter.

Get a plumber to look at it and drop the pipe into ground from inside the house.

I have to say that being resident in Australia, I never entertained the thought that you could have this problem.

Maybe adequate thermal insulation on the pipe would assist.

If you were close to salt water, then possibly using a salt water flush would lower the freezing point sufficiently.

Maybe flushing regularly to prevent the waste freezing is the answer, macerator dump pipes are normally of small diameter, so it shouldn't need much water to produce a change.

Often the macerator is also connected to the shower, bath, and or hand basin, so the timely addition of hot water from those points would help.

Possibly the addition of a second self priming pump at the outlet end would evacuate the piping sufficiently to prevent freezing, but you would have to integrate its operation in some way.

If all else fails ...Eat plenty of hot peppers.

Electrical heat tracing might be suitable. Determine how the pipe slopes in the loft (if at all). If it slopes downward in the direction of flow, you might need to worry only about a short upward section, and then free draining after there. Insulation is probably advisable.

It seems that if the toilet has been installed and used with a record of not freezing for a few years, why worry now?

I agree with you about the vent stacks and have experienced such an issue. The warm sewage can cause lots of moisture to be released on cold days within the vent and of course freeze. It is fun to flush your toilet with a frozen stack and find out your toilet vents through the bathtub drain. Once the water is sucked from the P trap along comes the smell. I have been forced to go on the roof to pour hot water down the stack to thaw the blockage. Thanks for the link, I was not aware of the device. GA.

My pleasure...

These units are great at what they are meant to do. For the units without an integral GFI device, they now come with armoured cable as opposed to the cabtyre type cable they used to come equipped with. The Canadian code precludes cabtyre being permanently connected where movement is not required. We worked with the manufacturer to get them to develope the BX equipped unit.

It seems that if the toilet has been installed and used with a record of not freezing for a few years, why worry now?

I can think of 2 reasons to worry:

1. Original owner/installer knew to not use it in freezing weather and did not disclose this when selling the house. (drop the value of the house)

2. Global Warming - it has hit record cold in the eastern parts of the USA the last 2 years. I have had some old trees and bushes, one about 40 years old, frozen out the past 2 winters. So one can assume that pipes that never froze before.... you get the picture. All it takes is one abnormal day/night.

OP location is unknown but you raise good points. I am about 380 km north of Central Penn and I have witnessed the last two winters of "global warming". Usually we are moderated by Lake Ontario but the lake has had the most ice cover ever last winter so it failed to moderate. And lots of snow! Too much. As I am a septuagenarian, next winter I will see about enrolling in snow bird land. Still OP needs to discuss the history of use with neighbours. they may have better insight.

How about that a vent breather heater... I have enough trouble just getting vents installed here.

"Please DO NOT add salt to the system. Whether you have a home "septic" system or are on a city sewerage system, salt is not a good thing."

That really depends on the situation and intended end point/reuse of the effluent.

Numerous places mandate, or encourage, the use of salt water flushing including Hong Kong. Santa Catalina Island, Gibraltar, Quingdao China, etc. The sea world complex in San Diego uses it.

Some industrial processes use salt water and the effluent legally goes to the sewer.

I have run into a few set-ups like that, A toilet placed somewhere where there is no sewer connection and a macerator pump is used to transport the waste up and then over to an established sewer line.

The length of your run is what concerns me, that length is likely to drop the solids out of solution and build up in the long horizontal piping run.

My suggestions (seeing that I have no idea where you live) is to make sure you flush extra clear water after your toilet flush and if you are concerned about freezing of that pipe, then add a bit of hot water to the clear flush water.

Another concern is the sewer gasses that accumulate in the pump space. Hopefully that area has a dedicated vent to the outside atmosphere otherwise you could be sitting on a deadly throne!

Some very good ideas so far:

• Heat trace tape
• Warm or hot flush water
• Insulate the pipe
• Relocate the pipe

Good luck.

I think we are all spinning wheels till the OP decides to get back with more info.

Macgyver, can you provide more info on a setup like that. I am not familiar with it and might be good to know more about just in case I find an opportunity that needs it.

Drew K

Every install is very different and you have to go with the flow, (no pun intended). The last one I saw was in a Las Vegas basement and the sewer was 10 feet higher than the installed toilet.

I did not install it, I was just hired to troubleshoot it. It was a crappy install and the pump sat in a pit about 4 feet away and covered with a 1/4" thick steel plate. The pit was in a "closet" inside the bathroom and stunk to high hell. After my recommendations, the owner decided to remove the toilet and the pump and make the basement with less amenities due to the fact he couldn't sell the house with the toilet set-up because it wasn't up to code.

We also didn't have issues with freezing either because Las Vegas doesn't freeze very often!

Yes every install is different, but if done properly the systems do work well. Installed one in friends basement many years ago, hooked up to septic system outside(septic tiles were actually slightly higher than the collection tank so a check valve was used). Never had any problems(or odors or leaks).

As the saying always goes, 99% of the time it's not the equipment, but the operator(or installer in your reference).

I don't think you have anything to worry about for several reasons:

1. sewer water is hot, especially from a septic system, bacteria generate a lot of heat

2. heat rises

3. plumbing systems are inspected and approved

4. the previous owner did not have a problem or the house could not have been sold

I dont think you are right:

1. Who says there is a septic system? No septic system no heat. And not enough heat to warm a two story down pipe/sewer pipe in hefty frost

2. No heat not rise and if the bottom freezes it still blocks the pipe

3. We dont even know where OP is. maybe its builder approved and builder was owner?

4. The previous owner maybe builder sold the house because of a freezing toilet system.

You see where this is going?

There's a lot of assumptions here about the "goodness" of this installation (inspections, approvals, etc.), but it sounds to me like someone's DIY kludge for installing a bathroom at one end of the house when the waste stack is inaccessible without lots of demolition.

That being said, if (and that's a big "if") the horizontal pipe is sloped properly then the macerated contents of the pipe will drain by gravity and find their way into the septic system without much buildup.

Although not stated, the location would have to be in an area like Alaska where the sun doesn't shine for half a year, otherwise the loft would heat up during the day and the night-time stuff will defrost and drain with the next flush.

If you are in a severe climate then as others have suggested heat tracing will solve the problem, but it won't be cheap unless you put it on a timer. You could always flush a pot of hot water after each flush as a cheaper alternative.

Good point North of 60 [and a GA], If anyone here knows about cold weather and frozen pipes of all kinds, I bet it is you.

A coworker here in the office is always giving me updates on the town in which you live. It gets cold up there.

He recently told me you are having resupply problems because too much ice remains in the harbor [another global warming problem I guess].

Did you ever get your town dump fire put out??

Hi Massey...

LOL... forzen pipes we know about. In an extended 14 hr power failure two winters ago, we froze our incoming water system in our 4 plex condo's mechanical room. The ice pushed all the gasket material out of the circulating pumps mating flanges. Marvelous...

Our water delivery system are quite someting here. We have two incoming water lines (in a line known as a "utilidor", that consists of two 1" schedule 80 flexible lines inside a 5" flexible line encased in 6" of foam insulation) that connect to the supply line from the city.

These incoming two lines connect to a header that has the circ pump in between the two lines. So we circulate water coming in on one line back out on the other. Both lines have 30 feet of heat trace back up on them that is switched on by a flow switch if the circ pump dies. Outgoing waste lines use the same large type of pipe(only with no feed lines inside).

The lines are made to handle freezing and stretch to handle the pressure from the expanding ice. If the lines freeze solid, when the power comes back on, the heat trace melts it out in 3-4 hours and you are good to go again.

As to logistics... ya, we have had a bad resupply thanks to the ice conditions. Southerly winds keep blowing ice from Frobisher Bay back up and into Koojessie Inlet.

A few weeks ago... there was over 8 kilometers of it between the floe edge and the shore line, which kept all incoming boats from getting in. We have had three arrivals (a tanker and two sealift vessels) not able to get in on time. We finally got the first tanker in last week and only the first sealift boat in on the weekend.

The trouble ice is both 1st and multi year ice. The multi year stuff is very hard and rips wholes in things easyily. They have managed to start unloading, only at a beach at the south end of town instead of their normal unloading point.

As to the dump... yet... but it cost the city 2.5 mil to finally get it put out.

Oh joy oh bliss...

More Photos

That is very interesting, I bet you all deal with challenges many of us saner folks never think about.

Not to say you are all nuts, but why would you live up there?? And how??

I will update my coworker. He will be pleased to hear about the latest news.

Yes... there are challenges to living up here. We plan more, stock up for emergencies better than most people in warmer latitudes do, dress better (my parka cost me over $600) and plug in our vehicles that have block heaters and battery blankets in them overnight.

Why live here? A good job opportunity. Came up here with a minimum of 3 year guarantee from the wife not knowing what type of job she would find. She got one as good as mine, even better pay wise for awhile (LOL I was a kept man). We came for 3... now starting year 11.

It is the old story... if you start something with the idea that you are going to succeed, most times you do. If you approach a new venture with the idea that your gonna fail at it, you usually will find a way to fail.

Hey what's all that white stuff????

They must be eating the snow!

the heat trace melts it out in 3-4 hours and you are good to go again.
I suggest as an overall solution: if you got to go, make it quick!
One puzzling aspect though...if the macerator discharge is vertical (how I read it) the P-trap level in the toilet is overcome by the discharge head, and the toilet should overflow upon flushing. This is a far greater problem altogether than frozen downpipes!
Never gets to freezing point where I live, blessed am I!

My comment above includes "the heat trace melts it out in 3-4 hours and you are good to go again".

This was talking about incoming water supply lines from the City in my condo and not outgoing lines for waste.

Got it! The problem is so out-of-my environment, I was too caught up in solving it, to understand instantly.

Q1 is not answerable as the nature of the prevailing weather conditions and their duration are not known to the forum, nor is the degree of protection of the pipe.

A2a: lag it

A2b: trace-heat it with thermostatically-controlled and self-limiting trace heating tape, then lag over it

A2c: make sure it drains downhill at a slope exceeding 1 in 120

A2d: re-run the pipe within a predominantly warmer area of the building where there are other pipes that are not at risk

A2e: don't flush the lavatory during winter weather conditions where there is a risk of freezing

If it ain't broke, don't fix it....I would think any water being flushed from inside the house would melt any ice in the line rather quickly....but I guess this would depend on how often the waste was being flushed and how cold the attic is....one would think that as heat rises the attic would be somewhat warmer than outside the house...

Don't use that toilet in freezing weather.

Eat lots of chili.

These people don't seem to have anything good to say about macerator toilets (apparently you have to be very careful what you flush... even toilet paper can cause problems!):

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/experience-with-142608

Other comments:

If you decide to use heat tape, make sure insulate over it. Otherwise, essentially all of the heat is lost. In chemical plants, we also use steam tracing (low pressure steam in small diameter copper tubing). Believe it or not, even that is essentially worthless without insulation. (Exposed steam tracing also hazardous! I have received my share of small burns over the years.) Also, heat tape won't melt an already frozen pipe very well.

If the house insulation is in the attic floor and the attic is properly ventilated, the attic space will be about the same temperature as the outdoors. Don't count on heat rising to help.

If the horizontal pipe in the attic slopes away from the toilet, it should self-drain, but the vertical pipe going from the toilet to the attic will always be full. Hopefully, that's located in a heated space.

Hi Guys,

Firstly, thanks for all of the replies.

I am in the south East of England (UK). The system has not been through a winter as yet. I only moved into the house May 2015. The builder from whom I purchased the house installed the macerator system as he moved the layout of the upstairs. The waste from the macerator, which does include the waste water from the shower and sink goes into a 40mm plastic pipe which goes ~7ft vertically into the loft space, then travels horizontally with no incline for 14ft and then there is a sloped length of pipe of ~ 3ft at an angle of ~ 30 degrees. The pipe then goes through the outside wall of the house and is fixed in place into the vented downpipe.

I hope the extra info helps. Thanks.

A 1 1/4" drain with no slope for 14'. Sounds unsound to me.

This macerator must include a tank and a pump and its own vent otherwise it will suck the traps dry when it purges into this capillary of a drain.

I'd be pumping up an other foot before that 14' downhill run, or lower the stack end.

One thread at a time please, since an unsound cannot sound, anyway.

Manfred, you do use some anti-freeze in your car I take it ?

There's your answer...1cup glycol in your cistern (probably good for the macerator anyhow).