Septic Part II

[Russianwolf]

Okay, we had the "honey-dippers" out last month and pumped the septic tank. But here we are with the same issues again (drain gurgling, and some water seepage near our tank).

The obvious cuplit is a blocked drainfield.

Are there any obvious (or not so obvious) solutions that won't run into the thousands?

I'm skeptical of many of the products that claim to fix this, but I've been wrong before.

[Daryl]

I think the additives are more likely to cause bigger problems. A former house we had we installed a fieldless system. It was pretty much a self contained treatment plant. About the only way you can save money is to do it yourself. Even then you likely have to use a sanitary landfill for the contaminated soil.

[Russianwolf]

another thought, would this be something that our Home Owners Insurance would cover? The lesser of repairing the current system or tying us into the public sewer that now runs <100 yards behind us?

[Daryl]

I am rather doubtful your insurance covers it. I am also surprised that you have not been forced to tap into the public sewer. Here in the Parkersburg area you pretty much have to use the public sewer if it is available.

[RobertB574]

This may or may not apply to you. I had lived a little over 20 years on a place with a septic tank and had many problems. I learned that where the lateral connected to the tank was a straight shot. There was no downward elbow to keep the solids out when the tank filled up. So pumping the tank did no lasting good.

I have no idea how close to the tank the blockage was. But I know that the blockage never went more than 10 or 15 feet. In my case the line ran about 30 feet before branching into 3 lines. So about 10 or 15 feet out from the tank I attached a cleanout to the lateral. It was straight down except for attachment point which was angled toward tank. The plug was just low enough to clear the lawnmower.

So after that if the tank was pumped out too late to prevent blockage, a waterhose could be run down the cleanout and wash the blockage back into the tank.

That was what worked for me after many years of problems. Hope it helps or gives you some ideas that may apply to you.

[gjat]

I had major septic problems a number of years ago. I called around to different contractors and accidently (but luckily) called a septic engineer.

A lot of questions have to be answered. Basically, you have various bacterias and enzymes in your septic tank that need to be alive to digest and breakdown the solids. This then flows into your drainfield and is further digested. Unless you overwhelm your tank with solids or by killing the bacteria, a septic system should last for a long time unless it is damaged.

Laundry detergents, bleaches, anti-bacteria soaps, disinfectands, and lot's of solids from a disposal are bad. Crushing or blocking the pipes from the drainfield is bad. Having too much solids in your drainfield and not enough water is bad. Grease is bad. Not having soil that can perculate is bad.

In my case, I was able to set up a different drain system for the washer, cut down on the bleach, repaired a blocked line, and was good to go without spending $5k. Most of the products that you flush in and replace enzymes and bacterias are good. People should add them regularly because we tend to kill bacteria off with hot water, cleaners, etc.

[Hellrazor]

Okay, we had the "honey-dippers" out last month and pumped the septic tank. But here we are with the same issues again (drain gurgling, and some water seepage near our tank).

The obvious cuplit is a blocked drainfield.

You could have a broken pipe or collapsed/clogged junction box. How old is the system and does it have plastic or cast piping?

[Russianwolf]

system is going on 20 years old. The pipe going out of the house is PVC, I havent dug up the outside systems to see what everything else is made of.

The Septic tank itself is concrete.

[Hellrazor]

Do you have an idea where the far edge of the tank is and how far away from that point is the wet ground? You best bet is to dig up the spot that is wet, either grunt work or hire someone with a backhoe. Grunt work is fine to ID the problem, but you will still need a backhoe to dig a legth of pipe out. Try to find a backhoe operator that does septic work since they can make the repairs.

[Russianwolf]

No need for a backhoe.

The wet spot is diretly above the Septic Tank itself. I know this as when the honeydippers were here last month I saw where one of the access hatches is (supposed to be three of them if I understood him right). So I know where the front chamber is and approx. where the other two chambers are.

The problem seems to be that the liquid is not draining quickly enough, likely from clogged drain field tubes or worse, blacked soil. This is causing the tank to overfill during heavy use.

[ssmith1627]

Just went through all that with my last house before moving to a new place a few months ago. The house was 45 years old and it definitely had some issues.

The guy who came worked with the septic tank guys to follow closely behind when work was needed -- because we were getting almost nothing from the drain field and the tank would just fill up again in a week after being pumped if the problems weren't corrected.

He had a metal rod with a T handle. He could look in the yard and know exactly where the drain fields ran which amazed me. He was right too -- he would push the end of that rod into the ground and you could hear when he'd hit the gravel of the drain field. If he found wet spots he knew that part of the field was active. If he found dry gravel, he knew the water from the tank wasn't reaching that part of the field so he knew quickly how much of ours was working and how much wasn't.

He also corrected the sanitary T inside the tank for us. Before we had a pipe that came in from the field into the tank and CURVED to the bottom. He'd never seen anything like it and wasn't even sure how it had worked all those years. The T allows the end/bottom of the T to be under water. The liquids can come up the pipe and make the turn to go out into the drain field but the solids can't. So they can't get out in the drain field to clog it.

Nearby trees can destroy the drain fields too. He warned us that we should have two box-elders taken down and one HUGE maple.

What he did for us was a day's work with a backhoe. He rehabbed our drain field. Basically dug it all up and ran new perforated 4" pipe down into it from the tank as well as correcting that sanitary-T situation. The cost was $2500. He got the proper permits and such so it was worth it to me. It did work properly after that for the time I was there. I was told it should last another 15-20 years.

Hope the info helps to at least put some of the pieces together.

Steve

[KLF]

First, some qualifications. I am a licensed septic designer in NH, and I teach septic system design and maintenance at a University. Prior to my teaching career, I worked at an engineering firm doing a lot of septic designs, most conventional residential, some large community and commercial systems.

The job of the septic tank is to remove and process the solids from the raw sewage inflow. Not all solids can be biodegraded, so they eventually fill the bottom of the tank, and the tank needs to be pumped. We (and the State of NH) recommend having a tank pumped approximately every 2 years, although it can be less frequent if the system is underused. System size/capacity is based on the number of bedrooms in the dwelling, but if a single person is living alone in a 4 bedroom house, then this system is underused and pumping the tank that often can actually do more harm than good.

Tanks are supposed to have baffles in them so the liquid and solids can't travel straight thru the tank ("short circuiting") to the outlet. Sometimes the baffles are done with pipe elbows and fittings, but most precast tanks have baffles formed into them. There should not be any solids exiting the tank, only a liquid referred to as "effluent".

Without seeing the site and system operating, I agree that your leaching field has failed. What most people don't understand is that subsurface septic systems that use a traditional "stone-and-pipe" bed are actually designed to fail eventually. Sure, some will last 20-30 years no problem, but eventually they all fail. "Failure" in this case is a buildup of filter cake material right at the bottom of the stone bed where it transitions to the soil receiving layer. A failure much earlier than that (2-5 years) is something else, the system was mistreated or constructed improperly. There is no magic chemical that will fix this, you have to dig it up, scrape off the filter cake material, replace the soil, stone, and rebuild the pipes.

You should check into the local laws and see if there is a more progressive system available that might be less expensive to replace. For instance, a popular alternative in New England is the Presby Enviro-Septic material (http://www.presbyenvironmental.com/prod_enviro.html). There may be something similar in your area, but just make sure it is approved by your local and state agencies.

There may in face be a broken effluent pipe beyond the tank, it's worth checking out. I'm surprised that you don't see breakout somewhere or the top of the bed isn't mushy, but maybe the topography won't let that happen.

Good luck.