Sewer Treasures!

[Jackrabbit]

This thread reminds me of an episode of "Dirty Jobs" where they went through a storm sewer somewhere. The guy was telling Mike about all the stuff he had found. Wtches, guns, money... body parts.

 

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[Bigcypresshunter]

Any suggestions, or thoughts, on old no-longer-used septic tanks?

 

[BLACKFOOT]

The old out house everyone knows is where they disposed of old medicine bottles an things like that also a few treasures have been found hanging on nails under the seat.

 

[roswellborn]

Hydrogen sulfide is not odorless. It is more commonly known as "rotten egg gas" because of the strong smell. It is however very flammable and is deadly in small concentrations. Not trying to be picky, I am just a froofreader by nature and loved my chemistry classes in college.

I had thought about going into froofreading but never quite figured out where to become certified...

jus' teasin' ya - an' bein' thilly,

Nan

who really was/is interested - but life kept interfering.

 

[Wetgreenie]

Great, now I'm ruined....

He, whatcha doin in there...... Makin sewer treasures??

No, I'm making underwater sculptures........of you....

 

[bootybay]

Grant..
my hubbys got a S3 license in the state of NJ... and is the supervisor of the plant here.. I know all about Man holes and lemme tell ya...you wont get me in one... by law here they have to have protective gear on with oxygen.. the methane gas will kill you before you can climb back up the ladder. Not to mention,as you probably know all the shots you have to get yearly to protect yourself from all the diseases in sewage.. Every disease known to man is in raw sewage folks..so please do not mess around with man holes or anything... Is your life worth a coin or two?

 

[downindixie]

I used to dig in the drainage ditch in my town.The bottom of the ditch was covered in large rocks like a paved roads.In beteen the rocks we would loosen the dirt with a screw driver and scoop out the dirt which would contain coins,jewelry,nails,horsenails,nuts,bolts.I've found a lot of nice coins and rings.
In Birmingham where the drainage ditchs run into a creek,we used a gold dredge and got over a gallon of coins and jewelry.Watch out for needles!

 

[wesfrye53]

Marc and all:

having worked in the water and sewer business I can attest that what you heard is true. We have a sump at the main entrance into our pump pit at the Central Plant in Nashville. An old timer told me that when they were able to cut the pumps off and drain the line, he would strip naked and head for the sump. He said that gold would naturally collect there and found a lot. Unfortunately our flows are such that we cannot afford to shut down as they did in the past. Also with stricter EPA regulations if we do go down everyone is working on getting the plant up again and there's no time for anyone to hit the sump. If I'm still around and they ever take the plant out of service, I want to be there!

We also had a guy that would eat his lunch om a wall around the septic tank dump. (I could never do that; the smell would knock me off the wall). When he saw something shiney he would jump into that mess and grab it before it went down the drain. He showed me some of his treasures; gold and silver rings of every type and some with diamonds and other gems.

 

[Bumpstick]

The septic system sounds interesting. I like the idea of an old PU Truck bead with rifles in it. I need to clean the pay dirt out of my truck liner; I wounder what lay underneath it.
The guys in the shop next door run a septic cleaning and port-a-potty business. They where talking about farm land for the slurry dump.
They offered me a job to drive a truck; maybe I should take them up on it and set up the truck bed with rifles where they dump the trucks. Up here all most every one has a septic tank and pumps the regularly.
The port-a-potties have to be a gold mine .

 

[scottone928]

Grant..
my hubbys got a S3 license in the state of NJ... and is the supervisor of the plant here.. I know all about Man holes and lemme tell ya...you wont get me in one... by law here they have to have protective gear on with oxygen.. the methane gas will kill you before you can climb back up the ladder. Not to mention,as you probably know all the shots you have to get yearly to protect yourself from all the diseases in sewage.. Every disease known to man is in raw sewage folks..so please do not mess around with man holes or anything... Is your life worth a coin or two?

She is absolutely correct! I have a Class A Wastewater license in Florida and if some of you guys get the bright idea to just climb down in a manhole DON'T!! There are diseases and gases down there that will kill you dead! You getting one of the Hepatitis's or anything else is not worth it. Here is something else to consider. I work here in Jacksonville, Fl and there are thousands of miles of sewers. Out of all the collection system and 13 huge wastewater treatment plants they might find a ring or two a week. That's it! When you look at it like that, it really is like looking for a needle in a haystack if you try to do this on your own. Just my two Lincolns.

 

[Fishenfool]

I work for the city cleaning sewer lines and we find all kinds of jewlery and coins, and other assorted junk cell phones ect.....

 

[wesfrye53]

I work for the city cleaning sewer lines and we find all kinds of jewlery and coins, and other assorted junk cell phones ect.....

Trust me.....

THERE'S GOLD IN THEM DAR SEWERS!

 

[jonnyrebel00]

I have never found anything good when raking bar screens. Although we had this one liftstation we called the spaghetti factory cause for some reason there was always sketti all over the place in it. For yall that want to go poop diving in manholes, STAY AWAY.

 

[wesfrye53]

I work for the city cleaning sewer lines and we find all kinds of jewlery and coins, and other assorted junk cell phones ect.....

Trust me.....

THERE'S GOLD IN THEM DAR SEWERS!

[size=
210pt]As jonny pointed out:

IN ALL SERIOUSNESS. MY COMMENT ABOVE, WHILE TRUE, WAS NOT MEANT TO ENCOURAGE TREASURE HUNTERS TO START ENTERING SEWERS! IN NASHVILLE, THE POLICE WILL NO DOUBT TAKE YOU TO THE STATION AND QUESTION YOU DUE TO HOMELAND SECURITY ISSUES, SEWERS ARE DANGEROUS AND THERE ARE "CONFINED SPACE ENTRY" REGULATIONS THAT MUST BE FOLLOWED.

PLEASE LEAVE THE SEWER ENTRIES TO THE TRAINED PROFESSIONALS! [/size]

 

[FireRescue]

I found a cheap Timex watch in one of my septic tanks one time. Funny thing was it was still keeping right time.
My workers laughed when I threw it back in. I told them we could see if it was still keeping right time next time we pumped the tank....

 

[jlove429]

[[/quote]

Hydrogen sulfide is not odorless. It is more commonly known as "rotten egg gas" because of the strong smell. It is however very flammable and is deadly in small concentrations. Not trying to be picky, I am just a froofreader by nature and loved my chemistry classes in college.
[/quote]

Hydrogen sulfide does have a rotten egg smell.The problem is when it reaches concitration high enough to kill it will deaden your sence of smell.Had a co-worker killed this way in a papermill.Worked 26 years in the paper industry and was always warned about the effects.

 

[ArkieGold]

This is not the first time I have heard of this. I saw a post a few years back, on another board, about a guy who works at a sewer/water treatment plant.

He posted photos of gold and diamonds that the filters caught. He seemed to have a good number of finds.

Too nasty for my taste but it just proves treasure is everywhere.

:P

That might have been me

I do work the city wastewater facility. Our collection system is clay tile for the most part, installed in 1970. Our old plant is the round above ground type which is now decommissioned and sorting of the collected grit under the bar screen has started. So far a few junk rings, one loose diamond, broken pieces of gold chain and some earrings have come up in the search. The pile is about the equivilent of a large dump truck full. I've only gone through about two wheel barrows full!

Of interest I will re-tell the story of the diamonds. We had a camera crew working the creek crossings to see where we might be getting infiltration. The fellas had long scoops that were used to get the grit out of the manhole that had been collected by the jetter used to clean the line before sending in the camera. Well the fella above with the scoop dumped the contents onto a tarp they had laid out. I spotted a little something shining and picked it up sneaky like and walked to the side. Yes we all had on our tyvek and rubber gloves...anyway, it was a loose stone out of a ring which further checked out to be a 3/4 carat diamond. I showed this to my boss who was also my metal detecting buddy.

We devised a system of sorts and jetted out a couple of the lines in town we thought would possibly hold some stones and it was only about 300 ft of line. Total take for that was 13 diamonds of various carat, all smaller than the first one, various other loose gemstones, rings, earrings, pieces of gold teeth, gold chains, coins, lots of sharpies like needles and pins and such.

Any time we were to handle any grit material with suspect treasures, it was soaked first in a HTH (chlorine for swimming pools) solution overnight to kill all the harmful pathogens and then we still wore nitrile gloves in the recovery process. Sifting, washing, panning to recover the heavies. Diamonds are the heavy of the stones and are easy to spot as they sort of look like drops of water in the water if that makes any sense. In my research was learned that one of the most common causes for lost stones is temperature differential caused by showering or washing dishes. Out pops the stone and down the drain. I've been waiting for years and looking forward to getting to go through the 38 year pile

Certainly do learn of possible hazards before attempting any sewer recovery. Pretty good accumulation of cautions in the above posts so I don't think I need to add any more on that. If you can find places where old facilities dumped the "grit" then you might have a fortune waiting to be found. Most all if not all facilities now have EPA approved sites for dumping and you can't get in there.

Our new state of the art facility has a neat little area where all the heavies settle out before going into the treatment system...

 

[Monty]

I'm not sure what "grit " is. In my City they take the treated sludge to a big field where it is allowed to dry. Then they scoop it up by the truckload and use it for fertilizer. They claim that after treatment it is safe, but the way it smells downwind I am not so sure. I haven't a clue if anything of value is hiding in the sludge? Monty

 

[Bumpstick]

Put your waders on and and run your detector out there. The heavy stuff will find a place to hide.

 

[reptwar1]

Hydrogen sulfide is not odorless. It is more commonly known as "rotten egg gas" because of the strong smell. It is however very flammable and is deadly in small concentrations. Not trying to be picky, I am just a froofreader by nature and loved my chemistry classes in college.

ROFL "Froofreader"