Studor vent on vent pipe above roof

[gquayle]

My house is typical rural setup with a well and a septic tank. There is actually the main house and right next to it is a guest house. The weird thing is there are studor vents attached to the top of the vent pipes that penetrate the roof.

I thought that these vents were supposed to be used in situations where the vent pipe doesn't go above the roof line. Do these serve any purpose above the roof line? They were probably installed about 12 years ago when the house went through a remodel. This was all done long before I bought the house.

The guest house has one bathroom and one vent pipe through the roof with a studor valve. The main house has 2 baths, 3 vent pipes going through the roof and 2 of these have studor vents.

 

[Carny]

Not sure why this forum, but no, you shouldn't need them on the roof. I can't think of a reason to have them there even if something is really rigged in the house. They would help with squirrels but why only two if that was the problem. They only let air in, not out, but you want sewer gas going out.

 

[jbs]

I've never heard of that before, but I have found that septic systems give off a lot more sewer gas (depending on the design of the system) than city sewers. We can definitely smell ours sometimes if standing under the eaves near the vent in cooler weather. Maybe they were trying to control which vent the sewer gas primarily exited from (hence just leaving one open)? What is the location of the vents relative to places in the yard where people will likely be?

 

[gquayle]

I apologize for placing this in the wrong forum. I guess when I searched on studor vent, I found 5 threads that were all under the General Garage Discussion and thought that there would be people who knew about them.

I think that some hardware cloth and a hose clamp might be a better solution to protecting against squirrels.

The one vent without a studor vent is located on the east side of the house. The septic tank is on the west side of the house and we normally get a breeze that comes from the west. I guess this could blow the sewer gas away from the house.

I think I will start by removing the studor vent on the guest house vent and see if the toilet flushes any better. I thought that maybe the toilets were poor designed toilets, but maybe these studor vents are causing some restriction.

Thanks everyone for your advice.