The following story is true. However, the names have been left out to protect the innocent—and the guilty.
What’s a designer to do when he designs by the book, so to speak, and something fails to work as it should? That was the question posed to me a half-dozen years ago by an architect who had earlier completed a modest addition for a small rural elementary school. Working under state regulations requiring, among other things, low-flow water closets, he had dutifully incorporated a pair of these items in the plans, showing a fairly long (70-foot) branch sewer line connection to carry wastes back to the main sewer line serving the original building. What was the branch line slope? The standard 1/8-inch per foot that the National Standard Plumbing Code requires for 4-inch sanitary waste lines.