How big is yours and how many horses are in the barn is services?
Background:
My county has made it exceedingly clear that I am not to have any kind of water disbursement system at my barn without installing a real septic system. This means my gutters can’t even be sent to a dry well without a pre-treatment!
I find that a bit silly, so I’m proceeding with putting in a dry well for the gutter runoff (when on small acreage, you gotta maximize everything) and for the wash stall (I have a total of three horses and don’t bathe frequently).
So, how big does one need to make a dry well in Georgia clay for a lightly used wash stall? I can calculate the rain runoff with some online calculators, but what’s the reality of what I need in terms of washing a horse?
Assuming 40 PSI and a regular garden hose of 25’, you’re producing ~24 gpm if it’s on full. If I wash for 10 minutes, that’s 240 gallons. Is that…reasonable? Do I need to assume I need to capture and disperse 240 gallons of water every time I bathe? Clay doesn’t seem like it will absorb that kind of water…ever.
Is there another solution I’m missing here? I can’t drain the water out the back of the wash stall directly into something that will evaporate it - there is a room behind it. Is there some kind of hybrid evaporation/dry well thing I could investigate?
No, you want to install either a rock pit or an exfiltration trench that your ‘waste’ water drains into and then seeps away over time, with some evaporation happening. It is based on percolation rates of the soil as well as flow rates (larger trenches for slower perc/larger flow, smaller for faster percs, etc). A drainage engineer should help you with the design.
Or, you could catch your gutter water, and re-use it for your wash water, then you only need 1 drainage system.
Too bad you’re not closer- it;s something I do as my business…
Are you saying the laws where you live are not going to allow you to do something but you are going to disregard those laws and do as you please?
Perhaps you should investigate ground water aquifer contamination in your area, you may someday soon be drinking that water.
I strongly urge you to obey the environmental protection laws in place where you live instead of disregarding them. If not for the sake of future potable water then to avoid the massive fines disobeying E.P. laws usually bring.
This is what I did. I can bathe all 4 horses in a row with plenty of water and you’d never know. The drain in the wash stall goes to a buried pipe that exhausts to a stone pit underground
I’ve have significant work done on my house septic system so have learned a bit about them. I suggest to OP a similar system is in your advantage and interest. Washing horses generates a bunch of dirt and solids. These will completely clog a dry well or rock bed. A tank to settle out the dirt and solids (definition of a septic tank) and a leach field to disperse the remaining water is actually a good thing. Make the tank easy to clean with a shovel and you’ll find it a good source of garden amendments.
If the country is forcing you to put this in then you’re actually going to need to run what you do through them. They’ll either approve, deny or modify your plan. Unfortunately just winding if isn’t going to help. If you are required but just so your own thing without inspections, let’s just say that if they want to be tough they can actually make you rear it everything you’ve already put in and then make you do it again or cut out and dog up the water lines. When dealing with this they don’t play. You’re not a big corporation that can afford the tines and lawyers inv
If they’re laid back then I’d suggest probably in a settlement tank (a precast septic tank is usually a cheap option) and then run either drain fields (ditches filled with stone) or a leech field (a large area dig out and filled with stone). The advantage of a dry well is you can pump the water out. The disadvantage is your not utilizing a large area for the water to seep back in to the ground. A cesspool is basically a drywell with no settlement/septic tank in front of it. If you don’t put anything in front then that’s basically what your creating. The dirt, hair and some manure/urine will still go down the drain. This will cook the pores in the surrounding ground causing your system to fail.
Calculations aside, I can wash my horse - with soap - from my the 38 gallon water tank I have in my trailer. Unless you’re really wasteful with water or you have a really furry horse, you won’t use much more.
You will regret messing with code enforcers.
The guy who built my house burnt some packaging material on site and they tacked up a stop order. (Dawson County GA)
I’ve spoken with a large number of county folks here and get basically the same answer over and over: “We don’t REALLY know what you’re talking about, have no interest in figuring out if you really NEED a septic, so we’re just going to tell you that you do.” Based on the way they “approved” my barn plans and then tried to fail them at inspection time, I don’t really see them being very helpful or logical about anything.
I’d love to put in a full septic, or hook it into my house, but we’re talking $15k in septic cost for a barn that is going to produce next to no real greywater and no blackwater. The stormwater (from the gutters) seems to be under no code enforcement. I can send that wherever I want without even consulting the county. It’s a weird limbo area. They’re building tons of new homes here and apparently can’t be bothered to understand how a barn works or is built anymore. Suburban creep is pretty much taking over.
I’m trying to keep this as minimally impactful to the environment as possible (I certainly have no interest in drinking the water that comes off the roof or wash stall). From what I have read and heard from multiple builders, etc, many, if not most, barns my size in this area have dry wells that service the light needs of a wash stall without any issues. I’m just looking to pick the COTH mind to make sure what I’m looking at makes sense.
For clarification - The dry well that I’m looking at using is a flo-well from NDS. I plan to follow their install directions exactly to make sure that I’m getting the most percolation possible for the soil we have here. Would it be a better idea to run a few trenches filled with gravel and covered than one large pit with the dry well in it? Based on my experience around here, I don’t have access to any kind of drainage expert who knows a whole lot about this and/or will take on a project this small. With all the new developments here, the guys are BUSY and uninterested in my small potatoes.
Catching the gutter water seems like a difficult solution to the problem and a less than reliable water source. I’m also putting in a water heater that I don’t want to have debris issues with in the long run. I’m certainly no expert on this method, but I’m also trying to keep this as simple as possible.
Also, for those who are upset that I would plan to put this in without the county’s blessing, this wash stall could easily be an outdoor one that is a simple box of M10 - that’s how little I plan to use it. I’m just a diva and want an indoor wash stall so that I can have lights and a place for farrier/vet and my nutball horse to stand. As far as I can tell, the county has no say if I bathe my horses outside, so if I want to shampoo them 10 times a week in my outdoor wash stall, that’s my business; but inside, I’ve got to run it past them (they already know and approved a wash stall, too). My understanding is that the water table here is about 30’ down, so I don’t expect a 4’ hole to be much of an interference with that.
Forsyth has been really unaccommodating towards my barn. Build a house here and they’ll bend over backwards. But if you;re not a developer…hang on! The blessing is that I’m zoned Ag1. The curse is that they apparently didn’t know any part of their county was still zoned that way. This whole process has been an exercise in futility!
Looks like the NDS Flo-Well holds up to 50 gallons. Do you know how long it takes to empty in your native clay soil? That 'time to empty will be greatly increased during rainy and or cold weather when the ground stays saturated.
Will the Flo-Well be directly under the wash rack or located outside with a drain pipe carrying the waste water to it? Have a plan to prevent manure, shavings, dirt, hair, etc. from getting into the drain, pipe, and into the Flo-Well. Have a plan to remove those solids from the system when they do. I would also plan for being able to add on another Flo-Well in the future.
It sounds like the ground water will be at most 25ish feet from the bottom of your Flo-Well? That would not be code compliant or safe where I live. YMMV
Considering the chemicals used in a barn (iodine, thrush treatment chemicals, insecticides, etc) that can be carried into the ground water…into the aquifer…and into people’s drinking water. Chemicals do not magically cease to exist because they go down a drain.
A well designed rain garden can be excellent at catching gutter run off. Pretty too.
I’ll look into the percolation time for the soil around here. I suspect it’s quite a while. I’m actually more worried about the quantity that the roof will bring into the wells than the wash stall. I’d love to put in a rain garden or some other type of elegant way to use the water nicely, but I’m low on money and, more importantly, space. The wells themselves (I’m already planning on putting two in line with each other) would be outside the barn. I have concrete slab inside that prevents me from putting it directly at the discharge of the wash stall drain.
I’m curious about how deep a septic tank can be to be code compliant? If the issue is that this is more a “well” than a french drain, I wouldn’t be opposed to putting in a massive french drain system, so long as I could still plant grass over it an let the horses graze on it. But my understanding is that is also kind of a no-no. Most of the grey water systems I’ve read about seem to have no provision for any kind of filtering (other than gravel) and are designed for showers and laundry. If I’m committed to using environmentally friendly products for the majority of the discharge, I see less of an issue contaminating ground water.
I’m also investigating a way to put in something like a pond filter in the discharge line before the well/percolation area that will filter out the bad stuff (unlikely to get ALL of it, but again, I could just be doing this on top of the ground somewhere so…) from the wash stall. Some of those even seem to have charcoal filters that would make it almost drinking water level of clean. I mean, they’re designed so fish can breathe in the water that they filter, right?
Thanks for the input and thoughts! I don’t mean to be cavalier about the codes and enforcement at all. I have permitted and had everything else done absolutely to code. The county has just been rather unyielding about needing a septic that would handle both the house AND the barn if I were to even put one in. That’s a bit silly with a house that is much too far away to hook into it, downhill from the barn, and already has its own.
Yes, it would be better to run several gravel-filled trenches than 1 pit. I would expect your perc to be, at best, in the 30-40minutes/inch rate, if not slower.
You could use the Flo-well to collect, then drain to the trenches for your wash rack, and another one or 2 to collect your storm water and drain out to another set of trenches. You could also use a rain barrel…
Basically all development codes these days is to prevent surface water run-off onto neighbouring properties, which is what occurs when bare land becomes developed and permeable soil becomes impermeable with buildings, paving, etc. and water cannot seep into the ground.
If it eases your mind, what you are producing from your wash rack is technically not septic. I also think you could put your drains into the paddocks and allow animals to graze over it, although I would NOT allow or recommend it for true septic.
Is it acceptable to think something along the lines of building several trenches covered by some amount of dirt (6" maybe?) topped with landscape fabric and then 4-6" of M10 (screenings/granite sand/whatever it is called local to you) would be an effective way to handle JUST the gutters? I’m envisioning a dry lot off the side of my barn and that would be a perfect place to put a french drain set up as long as it makes sense under something that won’t have plant life and will have horses on it. This sounds a lot like what I have heard for arena drainage, with some adjustment, as well.
What we normally do (and we have our fair share of clay, too) is dig 24" deep trench(es). The width and length will have to be determined by the perc rate. You could line along the bottom with 4-6" of fairly coarse sand (sounds like what you call M10/), like bedding sand and 12" clean drain rock over the sand. Cover with landscaped fabric and backfill w/ soil.
You need to do some sums. A 500 gallon septic tank will cost 619.00,(Home Depot), add some for fill and drain lines and burial. Compare that with all the costs you will have to pay for digging trenches/fill drain lines etc. Your horses can graze over a septic tank.
Yabbut, @Equibrit, she’ll still have to do trenching to allow the liquid in the tank to disperse. All the tank does is store liquid, which is fine until it fills up. Then what? Never wash horses again? Even if she only uses 10-20gals/wash.
I’m going to give the dry wells a try hooked up exclusively to the wash stall and drain the gutters off elsewhere due to their volume. That exact location is TBD. Gutters haven’t been installed yet, so I have time to noodle on that.
Maybe I’ll get ambitious once other projects slow down and do a rainwater collection system for watering. I’d love to use it for good!
The previous owners did a TON of grading on the property and it drains and disperses quite nicely the way it is. I don’t want to mess with good juju too much.
Thanks for all the input! If I can remember to revisit this in a year or so, I’ll send some updates. The dry wells should arrive today and be installed tomorrow, barring any surprises (which there have literally been on every project with this barn).
