Re: Septic tanks
First my story. I moved into a 23 year old house that on the surface looked like a good deal. It had some interior things that needed to be taken care of, a bathroom that desperately needed remodeling, but nothing we could not handle. The best part, it is 2 acres, 1500 sq ft. house, and it is less than a mile to the boat launch. We lived there 3 months when our porblems started. By the end of 1 year, we had invested 8.0K into our septic system. That included an attempt to revive a failing drainfield (1.3K) several emergency pumpouts (Thanksgiving, X-Mas etc...) during a rather wet winter, and a full drainfield replacement and upgrade to an LPD system (low pressure dosing). As a guy that has lived with the goods and bads, I will give you my experience and advice.
The previous owner of our house was one of the people that never pumped. 23 years of never pumping was a bad deal. The tank was full to the top, and as such, the system was not treating the waste in the tank. Instead it was allowing nontreated effluent to enter the drainfield. This completely clogged the drainfield/field lines in a way that was not repairable. On top of that, our roof was draining down onto the septic drainfield, flooding it and rendering it useless.
A couple of items we need to know to really help you.
1. Type of system: The two mentioned above are both variations of conventional anaerobic systems. The first is a gravity system and the second is a Low pressure dosing system. We now have the second system. More commonly built these days are the aerobic systems. These are much more complex, much more expensive to maintain, and often are heavily regulated by your county health departments. Lots of moving parts as compared to a conventional system.
2. Soil type: Are you mostly sandy, sandy loam, sandy loam with clay underneath, loose pack soil with rock underneath, etc... This is probably the most important thing to know when it comes to how to live with a septic system.
Even without knowing the answers, there are some general rules that apply to all the systems. Septic systems have to be maintained. The 6-10K bill for replacement is huge, and most often comes at the most inconvenient times (X-mas with your relatives, etc...). Schedule, etc... really depends on usage. I am not sure what the rules are in florida, but in TX, it is all regulated by the county.
1. If you have a garbage disposer, get rid of it. Septic tanks/drain fields are not made to take large non-digested particulate.
2. Dishwashers and washing machines use a lot of water, and as such can flood drainfields if used excessively. In my county in Texas, we can use the washing machine waste water, untreated, to water a garden, our foundations, or the yard, and as such we do so. It takes the addtional water out of the septic system, which lets the anaerobes do there thing, keeping "untreated" effluent from entering the drainfield. If you have to use a washing machine on your system, be sure to do laundry throughout the week instead of all in one day or two. Spreading the loads out will really help. Also, make sure you select the right kind of detergent. Anything biodegradable will be fine, anything else may be toxic to the critters in the tank.
3. Maintain your plumbing. Again, excess water is really hard on the entire system. Once every few months, put a drop or two of food coloring in the toilet tanks. Do not flush the toilet. Go back and check the toilet bowl in 20-30 minutes. If you see color in the bowl, it is time to replace the flapper in the toilet tank. Un-diagnosed Leaky toilets are the leading cause of septic heartache according to the guy that pumps our system.
4. Pump the settlement tank once a year. Hear it is 30-45 cents a gallon. Pretty cheap insurance in truth. When they pump it after the first year, make a note of the sludge level. If it is fairly low, you will then be able to understand how long you can go till you pump again. For us, we can go 5 years, but our house is now a lake house and is only used on the weekends. When we lived there full time, we pumped every two years.
5. Take head to the toilet paper, sanitary products, etc... mentioned above. The less you put into the tank, the happier you will be. My ladies (families lake house) refuse to dispose of their products in the trash. My septic guy said it was fine, as long as we pumped regularly, and we were mindful of how much water we used (to be sure we were not flooding the system.
6. Grease: You may have dumped grease down the drain in the past. No more. Collect it and throw it in your regular trash. Grease floats to the top of the tank, goes directly to the drainfield untreated, and will clog the system.
7. Chemicals: Be very mindful of what you put down the drain. If you would not eat it, or put it on your skin, do not dump it into your system. Common items people do not think about: Water based paint, ammonia cleaner, bleach cleaners, iodine cleaners, peroxide cleaners.
8. Drainfield maintainence: If you don't know where your drainfield is, figure it out. It is that important. Trees and shrubs should not be in the drianfield. Root infiltration is also a big problem, as tree roots can break and/or plug your field lines. Grass: If you can, maintain a healthy lawn over the field. You will not really need any fertilizer to do so. But, you will likely have to overseed the lawn in the winter time with a rye grass. Maintaining a healthy lawn helps remove water from the drainfield faster. It also gives you the ability to see problems before they are fixable. If you have water grass growing in your drainfield, you know there is a lot of standing water, even if is under the surface, and that indicates a system that is not draining well. Water grass is really easy to spot, as it grows in fairly large patches, and does not look like regular grass. It also grows about 3 inches a day (or so it seemed to me). Also, surface drainage: make sure that rain water, etc... drains away from the drainfield efficiently. Ground water flooding is what finally killed our system.
In truth, living with septic is not a hard thing to do, you just have to maintain the system. I know people that have 35 year old systems that have no problems, and I have known people with 3-7 year old systems that are already plugged and need to be replaced. Do the maintainence and you will be assured of no issues.
