I don't know what the heck made me think of this today, but it popped in my head.
When I was a kid it seemed like everyone's house had a hose running out of it that would deposit their dirty laundry water into the yard or the alley.
I remember playing ball in the alley and stupidly getting kind of excited when all of a sudden one of these hoses would just start gushing water and covering the "field".
Today I realized those don't exist around here anymore.
I imagine in winter they caused a heck of a mess when they would put that water out there and then freeze.
Come to think of it, I remember when my Mom's washer had a water-saving feature that would take the dirty water and put it into a big ol' sink in the basement, so it could suck it back in for the next load.
I'm not sure, but this is not a New England thing at all, the hose would be frozen 7 months out of the year.... all of our hoses go into a pipe in the basement or a big sink.
That's what I don't get Darlene, they'd be frozen 4 months out of a year here too.
I guess they just made sure they were angled enough that atleast the hose itself didn't freeze up, but certainly there had to be some skating rings forming at the end of the hoses.
At my dad's house (on the farm), there is a drain from the utilitiy room that runs about 60 feet into the trees West of the house. It is laundry and a wash sink drain. It comes out of the side of a bank of dirt so that only the very end is exposed to the elements.
I remember it freezing up just a few times that I lived there. I suppose since it is a drain, it was never completely full of water to freeze solid, and if it did freeze on the end a little, more warm water from the next draining would melt it back out again.
That's what I figured web. I would think the hose itself would be fine.
I guess those things used to be all over. I bet part of the reason for routing it outdoors like that is to avoid all the lint and strings and stuff going into your home drain.
I don't know why it was that way in the city, but the reasoning on the farm is to keep bulk of the water out of the septic tank. Less water for the septic drain field to have to deal with.
I lived in NYC, so we had indoor plumbing.....only joking....but we never did have anything like this either in NY or on Long Island where I lived as a kid
