Glasswashers (commercial??)

[TomLane]

Not sure if glass washer's would be classed as commercial as such but I have a query that I'm hoping someone who has worked with them might be able to help me with. Perhaps it's more catering engineer's field?!?

There may be some domestic link to it as well I suppose!

Basically -

Mother-in-law (to be unfortunately) runs a local social club & asked me to sort a problem they were having with the glass washer overflowing every time it went in to an empty cycle. It was originally installed with a washing machine up stand & 'u' bend waste. The waste pipe then linked up to 1 standard sized metal kitchen basin, 1 small hand wash basin & further along the line 4 urinals tee into the waste from the toilets in the next room & then to outside drain.

To get over the problem of the waste overflowing from the glass washer on empty cycles I wanted to put a longer up stand pipe in as the one that was there was too short in my opinion. However as it was under a work surface & the waste pipe runs at least 500mm off the floor there wasn't much scope to do so. Therefore I installed a tee and used the branch to put a spigot on and sealed the top of the tee with a blanking plug. So now it is all sealed, with no entering the waste trap. I've got a nagging feeling that this may be causing more problems than it has solved.

Although before I did this there had been a couple of incidents where the waste water from the urinals had backed up to the glass washer area there is a strong smell of urine inside the glass washer now all the time(no, somebody is not peeing in the glass washer).

My thoughts are to either work out a better way of changing the waste at the glass washer to how it was before but perhaps make the up stand part taller or re-route the waste pipe from the urinals?

 

[Leo21]

Surely without it being trapped it needs a non return valve fitted by law to stop the back fill of contaminants. Sounds like a law suit waiting to happen if your getting a smell like that in it.

 

[TomLane]

Surely without it being trapped it needs a non return valve fitted by law to stop the back fill of contaminants. Sounds like a law suit waiting to happen if your getting a smell like that in it.

Sorry, forgot the put that I left the 'u' bend part of the up stand & kept part of the up stand in place so I assumed that would suffice as a trap?!?

 

[tamz]

Many glass washers don't have a pump and rely on gravity to empty. They have to be trapped.
Fit a Hepvo and get the urinals changed to their own branch off the 4", Find out where the blockage is too.

 

[TomLane]

Many glass washers don't have a pump and rely on gravity to empty. They have to be trapped.
Fit a Hepvo and get the urinals changed to their own branch off the 4", Find out where the blockage is too.

I did think there would be a blockage somewhere, probably from years of urine build up from the urinals.

It certainly sounds like there is a pump on the glass washer though (I appreciate I'm not an expert on them, just like to improve my knowledge where I can). When the glass washer is put in to it's shut down procedure the water sounds like it's being pumped out. Does this not occur during washing/emptying cycles? If it isn't pumped how would the waste water exit from the washer?

 

[tamz]

If there are no MI's for the machine take the panel off the front and have a look or ring the manu.
Is the machine sitting higher than the waste pipe?

 

[TomLane]

View attachment glasswasher.pdf

apologies for the rubbish drawing but this is the setup

 

[tamz]

If it has always sat there it is pumped.
You need to take the tee off to get the air break back. The air break and the hose looping higher stops anything getting back into the machine.
Take the trap off and fit a hepvo but keep it as a standpipe with the hose hooked over
The problem is the waste pipe has a choke. You need to break into the pipe downstream of the urinals and start looking from there.
Best would be to run the urinals on their own branch pipe.

 

[TomLane]

Thanks Tamz, appreciate your help.

I did wonder whether I had starved it of air by sealing it off & also increased the risk of it back filling into the machine by removing the air break. I will make make the pipe longer & loop it back over as you say.

Which way would you have the hepvo running, vertically or horizontally?

Had also mentioned previously to them that it would be better if urinals were on there own outlets, from what I have seen as well, I would increase the size of the pipe as I'm not convinced it's the right size when I looked briefly.

I only did this as a quick job on the way home last week & as I was in there yesterday I had a check to see if it was all okay.