Sprinkler pipe water typically has added chemicals that prevent corrosion/rusting (water sits in pipes, rather than running through it, for long periods of time). Those chemicals smell like oily stuff (personal experience) and have a slight brown tinge.
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That’s a fire suppression pipe serving the sprinkler system in the garage. The water in those just sits there which is why it was so dirty when it first discharged. That’s also why they have big doublecheck backflow preventers to prevent sprinkler water from contaminating domestic water.
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While the initial outflow does resemble sewage sludge (like from a septic tank), typical waste water doesn’t look nearly as nasty. It’s almost entirely “gray water” from showers, washers, sinks, etc., with occasional random “solids” (an actual industry euphemism for excrement and other things people flush).
And to be ridiculously pedantic, it would impossible for it to be a “sewer” pipe, even lacking contrary clues, since sewers only occur outside of building footprints. Pipes carrying waste water within building footprints are “sanitary drain” pipes, at least according to North American plumbing codes.
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Yes, exactly. And the reason… I might theoretically know something about this…was back in 1992 I was possibly driving a tow truck, and was smart enough to lower the boom entering the underground parking garage on the ramp to miss this exact kind of pipe… but not smart enough to remember it once I had the car on the hook. It was a genius plan, I tell ya. Anyway, in my experience the water was not brown, but the pipe was much much bigger, so within a minute I was in the presence of a new underground lake…
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