Was walking around the backyard for lunch surveying the drought damage on the turf.
I've been in the house for two years and for the very first time today noticed a jagged 4" PVC pipe sticking up out of the ground in the yard about 6 feet south of the deep end of the pool.
The only thing I can think is that it's a sewer cleanout that previous owner must have nailed with his mower and I've never seen it until now due to the drought damage to that part of the lawn. However, there is another one much closer to the house and the one in question in literally in the middle of the freaking yard....seems like a really stupid place to put one. There was indeed some liquid down in the pipe but no smell whatsoever.
Question....is this in fact a sewer cleanout? What else could it be if not?

Thanks.

I have a 4" PVC pipe right behind my house. It's where all of the plumbing drains to the sewer. Is yours capped off?

there won't necessarily be any smell, but it is an easy fix. dig around as deep as you need and cut it off flush with the ground accounting for any extra height from the flush mount cap you will put on, such as this:




if the pipe is broken as you mentioned, you'll need a reciever to go over the pipe you cut down for the cap to screw into. The cleanout is still visible when you are looking for it, but you won't see it sticking out the grass being an eyesore or danger to bare feet in the case of the broken off one.

[This message has been edited by DwightSchrute (edited 6/15/2011 3:02p).]

If you're on an old school septic system, it could be a clean-out for the laterals.

I'd guess it's there to allow you to pump water directly into the sewer whenever you need to drain your swimming pool.

Do you have drains in your pool deck? These might be the end of those drains.

Last summer I kept wondering why I had a constantly wet spot in my lawn about 3-4 feet from my pool. I figured it was a leaky sprinkler line so I started digging around and found the end of a pipe.

Then I realized that every 2-3 days we were dumping out my kids water table from the porch partially into the pool and partially on the pool deck (and into the drains). Enough was going into the drains to make a nice underground 'spring' in my lawn...