Sewer worker AMA

Have you seen some shit?

Man I seen some shit.

How long would we last without sewage workers after an apocalyptic event? For example if Walking Dead was real...how long would it take the systems to stop working?

About 48 hours in high population density areas.

Tell us about "flushable" wipes?

No such thing they never decompose.

How concerned are you about the infrastructure of some cities?

Very concerned... we are hemorrhaging sewage into the water table in 95% of the pipes I view.

Could you (or anyone) expand on what that means specifically?

I'm a Construction Inspector for a Municipality, we hire pipeline CCTV like who OP works for so we can evaluate sanitary lines. You don't pump sewage except in some cases, it's all gravity based flow - so it runs along the contours of the land, which is very often near waterways. When old infrastructure fails the sewage goes into the Earth and leeches into the ground eventually making it's way to the water table, or simply spills into said waterways.

There are currently quite a few federally mandated consent decree contracts associated with the clean water act wherein municipalities (like mine) are under a time limit to evaluate and repair (by cured-in-place-pipe, pipe bursting, point repairs) old pipes in environmentally sensitive areas. It's really expensive because a lot of the time these ESA's are deep in the woods where machines and workers can't get to, so municipalities must build temporary roads with all the erosion controls associated to reach the old infrastructure.

This is all really boring when I tell my Wife what I do, but I think it's interesting. When we're tearing out the woods to build these roads I feel like the villains in Fern Gully but we spend a lot to restore afterwards so it's an important job (or so I tell myself).

I agree with everything you say. :)

Do you ever find valuable items? Like if I'm the idiot who losses her engagement ring down the drain?

All the time. I'll post some pics of my sewer treasure tonight. I have found probably 20 or so rings so far. The gold dosent really interest me though I find lots of really old historic coins and artifacts trapped in sediment those things are what I get excited about.

Do you get to keep these items?

I get to keep anything I find if I want it.

Does the smell just not affect you at all anymore?

It dosent. Just bothers my fiance now. But I no longer eat certain fast foods. Popeyes in particular smells 100% like downtown sewer grease.

Out of curiosity, did you propose using one of your sewer rings?

Good question my fiance has tried them all on and only 2 so far are close enough to be shrunk to fit. Once we get married I'll fork out the cash and get one sized right for her.

How often do you drop the "I lay pipe" line when people ask you what you do for a living?

Has to be a great ice breaker at social gatherings.

I haven't dropped that one yet so I'll have to use that now ;)

What was something you saw/found in a sewer that made you reconsider your profession, even if only for a moment?

Definitely would have to be bones... I have found cut up pieces of bones in the 36" pipe on key highway in baltimore. Still gives me chills. I can show pics when I get home from work in 8 hours.

Did you suspect they were human bones and if so, did you report it to police?

I suspected they were animal so I just put them In my pocket and kept on working.

Ever found an alligator?

Nope. Only critters so far have been bugs and the occasional rat.

Has anyone openly talked down to you or treated you differently because of sewer work?

Mostly rich neighborhood homeowners look down on you. They complain the most and usually have a very condescending attitude for no reason.

In the ghetto everybody knows what's up and they let us work in peace for the most part.

Except when they are convinced that your TV van is really an FBI surveillance and you are watching them through the sewage pipes.

I have had this happen a few times now. It's always a good laugh when I show them the sewer pipe camera.

should we be concerned about our sewage system? any chance it's going to go kaput someday?

It's kaput now... we're just bandaiding it until we all agree it's not cool to poison our water table with shit water and chemicals.

So how does it feel to be working in better conditions and with better equipment than swimming athletes in the Olympics?

I'd say I'm sorry... but I'm not. Money is the only reason we do stupid shit like rio.

Finally I have a question that I really want answered in an AMA. What are your thoughts on this thing?

e.g. what is it? have you ever seen one? is it fake or real? etc.

That's real it looks to be some kind of organic deposit like a type of fungus. Those wouldn't be in the pipe if that lazy company would jet the pipe before trying to survey it. ;)

There was a TIL post awhile back about a city that asks everyone to flush simultaneously to clear all the pipes. Would that really work?

Not at all. It would however cause millions of gallons of sewage to explode out of all constricted lines like some kind of horrific fountain.

Fat bombs, ie a mass of cooking fat, baby wipes and other non solubles. Have you encountered any? How do you deal with it?

We run a 2000 psi chain cutter through it and wash the problem downstream.

Are you well paid? What are the hours like? Salary or hourly?

I make about what a 4 year degree nets in engineering with a college drop out degree ;) hours are usually 45-65

What is something that a lot of people do, that they may not be aware is causing a lot of damage to sewer systems, and make your job harder?

Washing grease down the drain is hands down the worst thing you can do to your local sewer line. Second would be wipes. Third would be random shit like syringes razor blades.

What, in your opinion, is the biggest downside to being a sewer worker? Also, what type of Internet porn is your favorite?

Biggest downside would have to be there's not a lot of safety even though your local municipality would tell you otherwise... some things we do are a little too dangerous in my opinion.

Favorite porn... not sure I'm pretty diverse.

If I had to pick anything specific it would be those chicks with the quadcopter and the dildo on a string.

How bad does it stink down there? What do you do about it?
What is the condition of your work clothes after a shift?

There's 4 factors for smell... age of pipe, proximity to buildings, demographic, and diameter.

Larger pipes usually stink more due to grease. Lower income neighborhoods are the same story they cook with more grease so it stinks worse.

Old pipes tend to have hard deposits that will hold sediment in the pipe and when the jet nozzle shoots through it there will be hydrogen sulfide gas released that stuff stinks pretty bad.

So far as clothes it depends if there's a lot of manned entry or in the manhole work being performed. Mostly just a light shit smell and a lot of sweat.

Which Ninja Turtle is your favorite and why?

Pratt street in baltimore city... a 20 foot long piece of hair weaves all knotted together. It was packed with syringes, razor blades, and gold chains.

All of them. I mean come on sewer turtles how could I pick favorites.

Is it true that everything floats down there?

Nope if it sinks in water it sinks in sewage and will build up at the joints of pipe sections.

What's the largest diameter pipe you've worked with?

120"

Did it give you flashbacks about your birth?

Lol nope.

Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle?

Squirtle.

Fellow TV operator here. Sitting in my TV truck right now actually waiting for our vactor to fill up on water. Got our root cutter completely wedged on grounding rod in the line right now!

What interface / inspection software do you use? Pipetech? Granite?

We use pipelogix and wincan. Good luck with the root cutter. We will yank the reel reverse and snap the blade off and write it off if we're dealing with a potential dig.

How did you get started in this profession?

How much does it generally pay if thats not too personal for the interwebs?

I have a background in robotics work so when a friend offered me a job it all fell together. Not many people can competently rebuild complex robots and even fewer do it when shit is involved in the picture.

I started at 16 an hour and now I'm 20 an hour for general labor. I have specific hourly rates for robotic service I won't disclose ;)

Hey, thanks for doing this AMA.

Have you ever kept anything you've found in a sewer?

I'll show it all off tonight after work. I have hundreds of marbles lots of gold lots of rings and a bunch of trinkets.

OP please put it in your thread descrption so we can find it later on

10-4 I didn't think about that good point.

When you were younger, did you think "I want to be a sewer worker when I grow up"? If not... was it a last job available or did you feel like it was something you felt like you could handle?

When I was a kid I wanted to design robotics and now I have crossed the second to last stepping stone to making it happen. I had no idea I would be doing what I do now.

How common are poop-related jokes on the job? i.e. are 'shit head' and 'shit for brains' common insults for when someone fucks up?

Completely uncommon. Everybody's seen it or heard it.

Besides rats have you found anything else living in sewers?

Lots of bugs.

What does the typical work day look like for you?

Show up at office annotate 5 crews robots and their condition. Make adjustments to equipment per the task for the day. Cut and weld sewer cutter chain for pipe diameter assignment. Go out and help field manager supervise the most difficult jobs for the day.

Sometimes I need to be the one to shovel rocks out of a manhole or cut roots with a chainsaw. When certain crews are too slow or aren't able to work in confined spaces with fast rate of death gasses I'm first in line to get the job done.

End of day is review equipment and condition. Take damaged equipment out of service, find a replacement, identify damaged components and order new parts.

Do mutant lizards live there? On a serious note, do you see your future in this job, or is it temporary?

I don't plan on leaving the industry anytime soon.

Have you seen many fatbergs?

Not quite on that scale but yes I have seen and removed hundreds and hundreds of pounds of grease In all its forms. :/

How do you think the use of newer cameras (automated, 180/360-degree) or the advent of programs to automatically code video will affect your business? Personally I think the automated cameras are currently too unreliable but the idea of 180-degree fly throughs with automatic coding of defect seems very likely.

I'm one of the few ibak certified repair techs on the east coast and I'm not a fan of anything with more than a pan tilt zoom system. The panoramic camera system is 400 thousand tax payer dollars, needs 200k worth of computers to interpret the images, and it's so fragile it cannot be handled by general labor type people. Overall it's a pretty cool piece of technology but absolutely worthless in real world applications.

Do you have any ideas on how to get a rock out of a main sewer line?

My former neighbor's kids dropped some landscaping rocks down our cleanout. We managed to get all but one out. I was quoted $11,000 to dig up our driveway, remove the rock and replace the section of pipe. I'm hoping there's an alternative.

I attached some a video clip of the rock in the pipe. It's about 6 feet from where our sewer line meets the county line but won't go any farther. (https://gfycat.com/SerpentineSmallBernesemountaindog)

Please message me directly I'll help ya get that bastard out.

Not expecting you to solve my sewer problem in an AMA; I have people working on it anyway. But would you take a look at my /r/plumbing post and just give your two cents about the blood?

Sure I'll go check it out.

Is Ed Norton still the patron saint of sewer workers?

I'll get back to you on that.

Alligators. New York. True?

Not true. Would die of low oxygen in less than an hour.

You've mentioned how we're just putting a bandaid over the problems our infrastructure faces. What are some actions the average shmuck can do to help improve this situation, aside from not flushing wipes and pouring grease down the drain?What kind of action should local governments be taking to help this problem?

Us shmucks can't do anything. The problem is we cannot accept the price tag of proper infastructure repair so the bare minimum is done and nobody is accountable down the road when poor decisions fail. Blame us all for not voicing our concerns. But even I didn't know how bad it was until I saw it first hand.

Is there tons of graffiti down there, like how the sewers are represented on TV and movies? Have you ever run into anyone spraypainting, or anyone down there who shouldn't have been down there?

Only large diameter combined systems can be accessed without opening a manhole. It's extremely rare to see graffiti in a sewer unless it came from another sewer worker.

Set the record straight: how many alligators have you found down there?

None so far. :)

How often do you wish you paid attention in school?

I did great in school but college wasn't for me when I wasn't aloud to test out of classes I found myself contemplating life surrounded by people who were good at jumping through hoops. I burned up about 22k of my parents money in college and still feel bad about it. But my friends who did finish their 4 year degrees have debt and make half as much as I do so I'd say school isn't for everyone.