Parking Drainage

If it is an enclosed garage, how would significant amounts of water accumulate on the parking floors? For small amounts of water, there might be oil contamination from vehicle drippage, so why not convey it to the first-floor oil/water separator? (Perhaps upsizing it.)

I gave you a GA for that one.

In my experience, when I have questions like that, and present them in an "I want to do the right thing, but I'm not exactly sure what it is. Please help." way to the regulatory agencies they're generally very helpful in providing guidance.

Thanks CI!

Believe it or not, even the NYCDEP can be helpful regarding intepetation of the NYC, NYSDEC and USEPA regulations......well, most of the time!

The responde of the autority was a copy of the page of the NYCPC - 1003.4.2.2 Garages and service stations. Where automobiles are serviced, greased, repaired or washed or where gasoline is dispensed, oil separators shall have a minimum capacity of 6 cubic feet (0.17 m³) for the first 100 square feet (9.3 m²) of area to be drained, plus 1 cubic foot (0.028 m³) for each additional 100 square feet (9.3 m²) of area to be drained into the separator. Parking garages in which servicing, repairing or washing is not conducted, and in which gasoline is not dispensed, shall not require a separator. Areas of commercial garages utilized only for storage of automobiles are not required to be drained through a separator.

No any additional requirments above the code.

So based on the last sentence above we desided not to drain the the upper floors thru the OI.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

I'd go ahead and run the other floors thru your separator. You probably won't need to enlarge it any since there really wont be any additional run off. But if you are buying a manufactured separator and really want to play it safe go up to the next larger size & you shouldn't ever have to worry about over capacity.

This is also assuming that it isn't cost prohibitive to run the other floors to the separator.

Hmmmm, 3 stories for parking, maintenance, and storage, hopefully very well enclosed, presumeably all above ground, in New York City (?)... Sounds like a relatively suburban location, as opposed to a high-rise area(?) of what size foot-print?

Ok, in any case, there could still occur a vehicle fire, and probably will eventually occur a storage fire, or an electrical/utility fire, of some kind, from any number of unlikely combinations of circumstances, simply because, given enough time, some kind of fire will eventually start somehow, from natural or unnatural, causes...

Therefore, there will need to be a fire-suppression system installed and/or an eventual need to get a firefighting crew inside to fight the inevitable fire. In any case, fighting such a fire, by whichever means, will also result in some degree of flooding.

So, since fire fighting equipment will probably have difficulty accessing such a fire event on the second or third floor, due to typically low over-head clearances and tight turning radii, in such garages, it would be a good idea to provide for a firehose to be quickly passed up between each of the up/down ramps, or some equivalent alternative, so said fire can relatively quickly (addressed) before too much collateral damage is done to what ever materials are happen to be there at the time...

Thus, it would seem to be logical to suggest that a second oil/water/separator be installed inside or outside of the structure to exclusively handle the flash-type flooding of fighting an upper-story fire. Depending on the details of the circumstances, it could drain entirely separately from the first floor separator...

The main point is to include the relatively elaborate features such as those mentioned above, in the construction drawings/contract/cost-estimate/etc. early-on, and let the plan-checkers, bean-counters, posturing-politicians, etc., remove, in writing or public speechifying, such (extra) safe-guards as suggested above, in anticipation of their finger-pointing in the future...

Thus, they can boast how much money they "saved" the public, only in the short-run, and you will be better insulated from such (blamers), in the long-run, when it comes time for them to find some one other than themselves to blame when the fire finally does happen...