This is probably nothing, but weird enough for me to be soliciting advice at 1:30am. We live on acreage and have a septic system. Tonight I was getting ready for bed and I was brushing my teeth. I finished and rinsed the sink out. The toilet started making a bubbling noise and I watched as air bubbles came up into the bowl. They were large bubbles, then we heard a noise in the shower and watched some water and debris (looked like diet and pipe sludge) come up from the shower drain. Not too much, I would say about one or two cupfuls of liquid. I checked the other toilets and one other was making bubbling sounds, but I didn’t see any bubbles in the bowl.
What could be happening here? I fear that we’ll wake up in the morning and the house will be filled with sewage! We bought the home two years ago and had the septic system inspected. We were told it wasn’t anywhere near capacity. More than likely nothing, but now I can’t stop thinking about it.
It could be sewage backing up into the drains. The tank may be full, or not draining at all. It could also be a clog in the pipe holding a lot of sewage in. There are probably other causes, certainly you need to have it checked. If you’ve had a lot of rain it might just be something temporary.
When something similar happened here, it was because the main pipe from the house to the pit was blocked (a new fence post had been inserted partially through it; it had taken about six weeks to accumulate enough debris to fully block the pipe and back up as far as the house).
Thanks for the answers. Morning has come and no river of poop in the house, nor any more bubbles. More than likely something minor, perhaps blocked vent, obstruction etc. We’ll call or a septic guy on Monday and let him take a look at the system.
I’m putting bets that it’s our twelve year old boy causing the problems. He eats like a gaggle of horses and what goes in, must go out.
It could be a number of different things. I had similar signs with my system last year and it turned out to be due to roots growing into the line where it came out of the house.
No one wants to mention an obvious possibility? Check your land/title to check past use of the property. If the the house was built on an old Indian burial grounds or the like, you need to change your name to Carol-Anne and go into the light (or not, I can never remember).
On a similar note for anyone checking in who knows about septic systems–how far away is the typical leach (leech?) field? Our tank is about ten feet from the house, but were told when buying that the field was about three hundred feet or so away. There’s what looks like a clean-out pipe (PVC with a cap on it) sticking out of the ground about a 100 feet away, and a large area about 300 feet with what we’ve taken to be vent pipes (a few PVC pipes sticking up out of the ground). Could this actually be the leech field or old construction debris that we’ve let sit around thinking they had some purpose?
are your drains running free and rapid? if you drain the sink do you see some bubbles? if you at the same time drain the tub/shower do you see bigger and faster bubbles? if so then your plumbing vent system might not be functioning. check the roof vent pipe.
since you are on a septic then i know it’s not CHUD.
For the record, leech is an animal or as a verb, to sponge off of someone else. Leach is a verb describing how the effluent from a septic tank soaks into the ground, or how water extracts the fragrant goodness from coffee or tea.
the field has to be downhill from the tank and located in soil that drains well enough for that purpose. the soil closer may have not drained fast enough or too fast. you would have a vent pipe at the far end and inspection pipes at the ends of the other runs of drain field runs.
I had that happen before. My outlet from the tank to the field was blocked by a piece of crud. Simple to fix, but pretty labor intensive. I ended up tearing up much of the field, replacing the old tiles with modern plastic pipe with a nylon mesh screen on it. Once you start something like this, it tends to expand it’s scope, at least around my projects…
