Septic Fix

All I've ever heard from my father is stuff like "I've lived here 17 years and never pumped the tank!"

So after only being here four years, I didn't think things would be all that bad.

Overall it wasn't that bad, but the system was neglected and installed improperly (or something like that).

The plan was to access the Distribution Box and add levelers to the drain field access points.

We hired the eldredge company to do the work.

They showed up around 8am and started digging. You can see in the picture the "D Box" (the black plastic thing) they brought in case they had to replace what we had.

They found the D Box, an old commercial style concrete one, and discovered it was too deteriorated to install the levelers. Apparently over time methane eats away at the concrete. He showed me how on the inside the concrete had turned soft and you could scrape it away. That of course meant replacing the D Box. You can sort of see from this picture the irregularities in the lid caused by the methane. They had put the lid back on upside down while they went and got the mini track hoe.

With the track hoe, they dug the old D Box out. They also discovered we actually have six drain fields (there were six pipes leading out of the old D Box). This meant a couple of things. They had to get a bigger D Box (7 hole version was required. One inlet and six outlets) and had to inspect the other two drain fields. The inspection included prodding the soil to check absorption in the drain fields and running a camera down the pipes inspecting their integrity.

They found more problems. One of the extra drain fields we didn't know about before has two issues. The first is it's too close to the pool. More specifically the pool wasn't installed at the correct ten foot offset from any septic source. The second issue was the pool shed is installed over top of the drain field. Your not supposed to even drive over a septic field let alone set a shed on top of it. The risk of compaction is too great and detrimental to the draining effectiveness. Unfortunately there's not a whole lot we can do about either now.

When they went to install the new D Box, they found another issue. The inlet pipe coming from the septic tank was angled incorrectly. The inlet should be flowing downhill to the D Box (no brainer right?). In our case it wasn't. Not only that, but it wasn't connected to tank incorrectly and actually leaking down the side of the tank. This part wasn't in the initial estimate and would cost more if I wanted it fixed.

Of course I wanted it fixed, so they did.

Now I have a new distribution box with speed levelers, an empty tank (pumped out 1,000 ga), and a repaired connection from the tank to the distribution box.

Should be good right?

Who knows?

The whole septic thing (at least in PA) is a mystery. Even the septic people seem surprised if it works or lasts. The whole time the guy kept suggesting I look into getting an easement through my neighbors property to access public sewer on the street in front of our house.

Great. I just spent $2k on a fix you're not confident about. I'll be sure to get as much as I can out of it, before I go the easement route.

- b