Sewer Bench

Each of our houses connects to the community sewer through two clean-outs and a manhole that contains a back flow preventer. They are quite ugly, as you can see from the photo at right. I had a couple of left-over post ends. When I bought the timbers for my lattice posts they only came in multiples of 4’, so I had some extra, which I saved. I decided to build a bench over my sewer manhole. It won’t really hide it, but probably will distract the eye from that eyesore.

First thing I did was to cut the clean-out pipes shorter. There is not reason for them to be long. They just want to be easily found when needed. That helped considerably. In the photo at left you cannot see those pipes because the stop at ground level.

Then I dug holes on either side of the manhole — down to a gravel layer that must have been installed by the plumber. (The white bucket in the back is for collecting rocks whenever I dig.) I treated my posts with wood preservative, put a larger river rock in the bottom of the hole, inserted each post, and packed them in with more river rock. I use river rock for this purpose (rather than concrete) because it separates the wood from the moisture in the soil or concrete, which would cause the wood to rot. I tamp the rock as I put it in and the posts are solid. Also, water cannot puddle on top of concrete and saturate the post at ground level — a common problem I have seen.

Next I cut off the posts to the right height (18” minus the thickness of the bench top) and stain them with the gray color I have used on the rest of my exterior wood. This color will gradually fade into the gray that the wood becomes after it ages. I plan to mount the bench top on pegs so that it can be easily lifted off, giving access to the back flow preventer inside the manhole. As you can see, the benchtop did not take the stain so well.