Every town is different, and politics often gets involved.
In my town, money mismanagement led to a major budgetary shortfall, and rather than default on a bunch of things, the township decided to force everyone on our street to hook up to the township’s sewer system. Normally when this happens, the township will float people a loan so that they aren’t hit with a huge bill all at once, but because the township was really doing this for money, they didn’t allow people to go on any sort of payment plan. Plumbers also had too much work and couldn’t afford to put people on payment plans either. The long and short of it was that everyone on our road was paying a total (some to the township, some to the plumbers) of somewhere between $7k and $15k depending on how far their home was from the road. Those that could pay out of pocket did so. Some folks had to take out home equity loans or find some other means to pay for all of those costs up-front.
I know one family who simply couldn’t afford it. The township put a notice on their door that they had 90 days to comply or the township would condemn their house. 90 days came and went and they still couldn’t afford it. The township did not follow through on their threat. Eventually after about 2 years they did finally pay and get all of the work done. The township kept sending nasty letters and threatening legal action, but never actually did anything other than hang nasty messages on their door.
In the majority of other cases that I have heard about, either the plumbers or the township (or both) would offer payment plans so that you wouldn’t get hit with all of that at once.
With all of these additional customers suddenly hooking up to the sewer system, we ended up overloading the system, and our water/sewer fees skyrocketed since the township was paying significantly more in fines for overloading things than they were for the actual water and sewer services.
Needless to say, when the next elections came around, we voted all of the a-holes who had gotten us into this mess out of office. The folks elected in their place made some deals to pump water and sewage fairly long distances to where it needed to go so that we were no longer overloading things, but all of that construction costs money, and our water/sewer bill is still pretty high as a result. We pay roughly triple what the folks down in Baltimore pay for water and sewer.
Similar to what @engineer_comp_geek said, every home in the affected area was indeed required to connect to the new collection system within a certain period of time. The town offered low or no-interest loans for homeowners to get the work done, along with a list of contractors pre-certified to do the work for a set negotiated price. (Or homeowners could find their own contractor if they wished.)
Add all of South America to this protocol. When staying in a nice hotel in Peru, Chile, or Argentina there will be a bidet, toilet, and little lidded trash can for your rolled-up TP. Fun times for Americans!
The public utility I work for would be happy if people would stop using their toilets as a trash can. Particularly problematic are wipes of all sorts (especially the non-flushable ones like disinfecting wipes, but even the so-called flushable wipes can cause clogs and backups); and fats, oils, and grease (FOG), especially from restaurants, which are actually required to have a grease trap.
There is a program we have been promoting recently with the slogan: “Toilets Are Not Trashcans. Only Flush the 3 P’s.” [The 3 P’s are pee, poop, and toilet paper.]
My FIL used to spatula all sorts of stuff into his kitchen sink disposal. It was amazing. After complaining about the slow drainage from the sink and calling a plumber to dredge it out I explained to him that nothing other than little stuff getting rinsed off dishes should be disposed-of in the sink “garbage disposal”, to his puzzled dismay he asked “but, then what’s it for?”.
I watched with dismay as my MIL put a dozen grapefruit rinds down the disposal into their septic system. I tried to say something but she wasn’t having it, in the same vein as your FIL. Oddly enough they had to replace the leachfield a few years later…
Do many of these houses septic setups then include a grey-water system to catch sinks and tubs, limit the volume going into the sewage “container”? That would seem logical, especially if the region was such it could use lawn watering too.
I’ve heard of some more rural subdivisions where the water service is there, but the owner needs to get their tank sucked out regularly. (no septic fields)
In a properly designed septic system, this would not generally be needed. The limiting factor is usually the amount of solids. The liquids simply pass through the septic tank via baffles and leach into the ground via the leach field. So there is generally no need to divert the flow from sinks and tubs. A garbage disposal, on the other hand, is not generally recommended for a house with a septic system.
With that said, there are times where you don’t want some flow going into a septic system because it might disrupt or kill the microorganisms responsible for breaking down the solids. The most common example is the backwash flow from a water softener. My house has one of these, and I installed a separate dry well to direct the backwash brine into.
Not sure what you mean by the water service being there, but “septic systems”without leach fields were fairly common many years ago. They could be as simple as a brick tank with holes for the sewage to leach out. To be clear, these are not modern properly designed systems, provide little or no treatment, and are illegal today.
When a system like this is discovered, regulatory authorities will generally require the homeowner to correct the situation by replacing it with a properly designed septic system or connecting to a sewer collection system if available.
I had a situation like this earlier in my career. The homeowner didn’t want to install an expensive septic system since we were in the process of installing new sewer mains in the street that they could connect to once completed. In the meantime, Connecticut DEEP required them to at least replace their tank with a so-called “tight tank” with no openings. This meant they had to have their tank pumped out every week or two. With septic tank pumping costing $200-$300 a pop, this got expensive fast. I’m pretty sure they were literally the first homeowner to connect to the newly installed sewer main once it was completed.
I used to live in a hilly exurban unincorporated community that was later incorporated as a town then later yet enveloped by encroaching suburbia. I personally moved in late, but a lot of legacy infrastructure was still there.
We had county-supplied potable water that they obtained from rivers & wells.
On the drain side our house had a septic tank. But the output side of the septic tank was connected via a high-pressure lift pump to a high pressure main line in the street. Which in turn eventually went to a city substation which was eventually pumped about 8 miles to the adjacent suburban town that had a real sewage treatment plant operated by the county.
My house wasn’t that old when I bought and the septic tank to the city high pressure sewer main was original equipment. There never was a leach field.
It was a weird hermaphrodite system. Made worse because the concrete septic tank was buried 20 feet down in the front yard. And the weight of the overburden far exceeded the rated structural strength of the concrete cap. When I sold the house the tank was in the process of caving in. And the high pressure sewage pump was a perennial source of issues. Who expects 100psi sewage? I will say it makes an impressive shit fountain when a junction fails. Doubly so at the foot of a 200’ foot descent.
Rural / ex-urban America: where ignorant people do stupid shit contrary to code and good logic for slightly increased profitability while having zero adult oversight. Never again.
We eventually removed the garbage disposal and put in piping, because an unused disposal is a really terrible drain. And naturally the place is on septic, so why there was a disposal there in the first place is kind of baffling.
This is not a reproduction but a restoration of officers’ quarters at Fort Larned, KS, 1866—1878. The stone residential buildings faced the interior of the quadrangle. This is the view from outside. Presumably the U.S. National Park Service is perfectly aware of the original siting of the privy located near the back fence, which is not that far from the water well between the porches of the duplex.
That almost describes the semi-rural subdivision we looked at. It was more like a suburb with larger lots. (Say, twice as large as most expensive higher-end suburban city homes.) Water was piped in, sewage was a giant plastic tank buried on the lot; it had to be pumped out regularly. I didn’t ask how often, or what that cost, because we’d already decided the drive into town was too much. I don’t think anywhere allows septic fields in new construction, especially not in quasi-suburban density areas. That’s why I asked about grey water, when you have to pay to pump each load, I assume less is more.
I worked with people who grew up on fairly isolated farms, and several remember the time (60’s?) when their family put in electric pumped water and indoor plumbing, instead of an outhouse. I presume this included electric pumps from the well, and a septic tank system. My uncle visited Canada from England in the late 60’s, and my dad says one of his more colourful descriptions was the number of flies on the outhouse wall visiting cousins on the prairies.
I was in Skydome in Toronto for a computer show long ago when there was a loud bang! and a spout of very brown water erupted 20 feet in the air on the ground floor of the playing field. You never saw anyone move power cables and equipment away from the water so fast…
Garrison Keiller has an episode where one town occupant realizes he must dig up and replace his failing septic tank, only to find the previous owner repurposed an old car as a tank. To make matters worse, he’s trucking a derelict car filled with sewage across town to the dump and ends up being blocked by the local 4th of July parade… Either he has to back up his trailer or the local militia’s tank has to back up…
My friend had a modular put on a 30 acre lot that is denser than rural but a bit shy of suburban. The county required him to have a two-tank septic system with the second tank built with an outflow regulating pump, because our area has percolation issues. So, yeah, some areas do allow it.
It seems they work since they are widely used but I just cannot imagine it.
A family of (say) four peeing and pooping with toilet paper into a tank and it just magically dissipates into your yard? I remember having to pick up the poop my dog did. She was smaller than a human and her poop did not magically disappear…I wish it did.
Again…apparently septic systems work. I just do not get it (and that is my fault).
