Okay,
I need a little advice this morning. I need to verify which of two sanitary trunk lines a projects I'm working on drains into. I'm going to have someone drop some Rit dye down the toilet and flush. Any suggestions on the most visible color?
Thanks in advance.
Probably not brown!
In the UK there used to be a proprietary fluorescent pale green dye that was fairly persistent, a newbie, who didn't read the instructions to 'use sparingly' tipped a box of it down a sewer about half a mile upstream of the outfall into the sea in the middle of a busy harbour, by the end of the day the entire sea surface out to the harbour entrance was fluorescent green!
Don't tell the guys at the treatment plant, but once (about 15 years ago) i was trying to figure out how the manholes on a college campus connected; I put guys at the downstream options and dropped ping pong balls into the upstream manhole. Crude, but efficient; I'd suggest the dye these days
John Putnam, post: 429302, member: 1188 wrote: I'm going to have someone drop some Rit dye down the toilet and flush
Is there a clean out near the building you can use? If not I'd these the dye's reaction to porcelain first...just sayin'
Lordy, Lordy. This reminded me of a situation many years ago involving a female co-worker. All employees wore clip-on plastic name badges at all times. The badges included our picture, our full name, our employee number, etc. Not having your badge on was a major deal.
One day as she leaned over to flush the toilet her badge came loose somehow and dropped into the swirling waters. GONE!!! Holy crap, Batman. What to do now? She immediately went to the appropriate office and reported what had happened. They notified the operators at the facility sewer plant to keep an eye out for her badge mixed in with the other "floaters". They gave her a three-page form to fill out detailing precisely when and where she lost her badge and what efforts she had made to retrieve it. It was a standard form to fit all situations, so some questions were ludicrous while others were easy for her but very difficult in the standard case. For example: Where did you lose it? In the standard case the standard answer would be "I have no idea." because if you knew where you lost it, you would go get it.
About an hour later the janitor came walking into her office holding her badge and a stack of wet paper towels. It had miraculously never left the toilet and floated back to the surface at some point after her departure from the stall. Then she had to return to the bureaucratic office and fill out another set of paper work to report that the lost had been found, but that she would like to have a new one made anyway.
Red
Green works well too.
The stuff we used to use was red in the bottle but turned fluorescent green when it hit water. It's been years so I don't remember the name. Check with your local sewer department, I'll bet they know where to get it.
Andy
Favorite quote from the Fugitive: "Marshal Biggs: If they can dye the river green today, why can't they dye it blue the other 364 days of the year?"
John Putnam, post: 429302, member: 1188 wrote: Okay,
I need a little advice this morning. I need to verify which of two sanitary trunk lines a projects I'm working on drains into. I'm going to have someone drop some Rit dye down the toilet and flush. Any suggestions on the most visible color?Thanks in advance.
Years ago, I was responsible for locating leakage into Christiansted (USVI) harbor from the main sewage outtake trunk exiting the plant into the ocean. After a week of diving, looking for signs, I happened to meet some US Naval Officers (whose ship was visiting), at the local lunch dive.
They not only told me about, but gave me, two or three canisters of their florescent green "man overboard" dye. This was dye on steroids. We rented a small plane, and at the appointed time, my assistant opened them up and poured them into the pipe at 5 minute intervals and Voila! The stuff was bubbling out of a break in the pipe in the harbor. Could see it clear as day, both from the air and on the water. Lasted a good half hour or so.
Here's a link to what I think is very similar. $20
