It’s not always safe; that’s why local building/plumbing codes will (or should) require minimum set back distances from wells to septic system components. The surrounding soils will have a big impact on how fast and far a leaking septic field or tank will migrate. If your on top of loose alluvial gravels the piss-water can percolate down though it 50 feet over night… If your on top of a 10 foot thick layer of dense clay then surface contamination may never find its way down to the water table (locally at least).
Never, ever, buy an empty lot without a Perc Test. Failing a perc test means the city or county won’t allow a septic system.
solids will plug the drain field and kill it. you should have a filter on the tank outlet to prevent solids from getting into the drain field, this filter should be cleaned once or twice a year.
solids should be pumped out of the tank about every 3 years. this keeps the tank and drain field healthy. costs $100 or slightly more.
drain fields are pitched slightly down hill, just inches for the whole length.
much of the liquid get used by surface plants in that area or evaporates in nonfreezing situations.
Good to know, thanks.
There are two main types of septic system. In a typical septic system, you have two tanks. In the first tank, all of the solids settle out. That tank needs to be pumped out every few years. In the county where I live, it’s mandated by law that it has to be pumped out and certified that it was done so every three years. Before that, I used to get mine pumped out every five years.
From there, the liquid goes into a second tank, which is just temporary storage that is necessary because the liquids come out of your house faster than they can drain out into the drain field. From there, the liquids drain into the drain field, and that’s it.
In the second type of septic system, the drain field is replaced by a “sand mound”, which is a sand and gravel pile under the ground with PVC pipes with holes running all through it. A pump is installed in the second tank (the one holding the liquids), and instead of just draining into the ground through the drain field, the liquids are pumped into the sand mound. This system is necessary in places where the soil doesn’t percolate well enough. In my county, all new septic systems are required to be sand mound systems.
A conventional septic system will last pretty much forever as long as you maintain it properly. A sand mound system has a pump, and that pump will wear out after a while. Go with a good Gould pump. Anything cheaper will wear out much sooner. Getting the pump replaced is not cheap. I replaced a pump once (with the help of my neighbor) and let me just say that while you can replace it yourself (if you’re handy), it is NOT something that you really want to do. IMHO, it’s worth the money to have someone else do the work.
I had one pump wear out and another pump that got killed by lightning striking a nearby tree then following the electric line through the ground and into the pump. Lightning strikes are generally not covered in the pump’s warranty. A good pump will run you about $600 (maybe a bit more, it’s been a while since I had to replace one) and labor to replace it will cost you a few hundred.
For a cost comparison, with city sewer you have a monthly or quarterly charge that never changes, and with a septic system you don’t. With the septic system you’ll have a charge every few years (most places are 3 years these days) to have the solid tank pumped out, and then you may have emergencies like the pump dying on you, if you have a pump. We started out with a septic system and were then forced onto city sewer. Overall the city sewer costs are higher, but they are also constant. The septic costs were lower overall, but were also much more sporadic. You could go a few years without paying anything, then all of a sudden have to write out a few several hundred dollar checks all at once.
For maintenance, the key to remember is that your septic tank is a living thing. There’s all kinds of little microbes living in there. You don’t want to kill them, because they break down the solids. Keep them healthy and you won’t have to pump out your tank so often. Kill them by flushing a lot of detergents and cleaning products and you’ll have to get your solids tank pumped out much more often. They recommend tossing some yeast down your toilet every once in a while. I never bothered. Also, always use toilet paper that is designed for septic system use, otherwise it won’t degrade and again you’ll have to have your tank pumped sooner.
I got royally screwed by our township, along with everyone else who lives on my road. The township mismanaged its money and mismanaged its water and sewer systems, and basically got themselves into a huge mess. Their way out of it (at least financially) was to extend the sewer line down our road, which was something that they had planned on doing eventually anyway. However, because they needed the money, they refused to do payment plans like townships normally do, and the local plumbers, who were suddenly overloaded by all of the sewer hookup jobs that they had to do, couldn’t float loans for the jobs either. So we had to come up with money for the township and money for the plumbers all at once. Most of the time, when they extend city sewer into your area, they’ll put you on a payment plan. Just be aware that since you already have city water, city sewer may be coming soon, and if your township is run by a bunch of idiots like mine, you could face similar issues.
Another issue, which happened to the folks who owned the house before I did, was that the house originally had a simple septic system (no sand mound, no pump). That system wasn’t maintained very well, and when they bought the house it didn’t pass inspection. Between the time the house was built and they bought it, the county enacted a law requiring all new septic systems to be the sand mound type (because the soil in our county doesn’t percolate well), so they had to install the much more expensive sand mound system. Installation of a sand mound system costs about $15k in my area.
I liked the lower costs of a septic system, but I was not at all sad to get rid of that pump. I used to cringe every time we had a thunderstorm.
If you have a well and a septic system, they are required to be a certain distance apart from each other so that you don’t end up drinking your own waste. In our house, the well was in front of the house and the septic was behind it. I’ve never known anyone who had a problem with having both a well and a septic system. Well pumps do suffer the same problems as septic pumps, mainly that they eventually do wear out and they are vulnerable to lightning strikes. If your well pump goes out though, you are immediately without water. If the septic pump goes out, you call someone to pump out the tank and you’ve got a few days to have it fixed before it fills up again, but you can still take a shower.
there are locations that don’t perc, and not on sewers, that might allow some solution. there are systems that can have a drain field in a mound. things will look and cost different but it still might be usable.
Oh, jeez, I have kind of forgotten about the septic tank. We last had it pumped out 25 years ago. But, I haven’t seen anything go wrong.
Still, I think I better get that done…
For new construction, septic systems are designed based on the percolation test and the number of bathrooms (or bedrooms?) in the house. If you want an idea of the total cost of installing a system, your best bet would be to call up the county and a contractor familiar with the area.
Well, you can flush the shitpaper, and just throw away the pee paper. Sometimes we had shitpaper we chose to flush. We took the paper to the outside trash every night, and had a self-closing lid on the can. No as gross as you’d think, really. When we had guests, we put it away, and let them flush, unless they were either people who had septic systems themselves, or wild-eyed environmentalists.
On the drinking water, we had a filter on the house, and also put our drinking water in a Brita pitcher. It just tasted better, because it was pretty hard water. When I was pregnant, I bought “nursery water” for drinking and cooking. There was a plant that dumped PCBs nearby about 15 years ago, or I might not have worried so much about the water when I was pregnant.
The on-house filter had to have the core changed a lot, but before we got it, we were going through coffee makers, and had to do some interesting things with Lime-away and douche bags to unblock our toilet periodically. When we had washer/dryer hook-up installed, and bought a rolling dishwasher, we put in the on-house filter.
" … interesting things with Lime-away and douche bags…"
I love a girl who can turn a phrase.
Why does this help? The difference between flushing every pee or not is just a few flushes of water a day. The same amount of bodily fluids eventually go into the tank.
It’s the volume of water. Not a big deal if it’s just been sucked out, but it helps a lot if it’s getting full.
Ours was a pain in the tuchus to suck out. We had to move a big cement plug that required at least two people, and crowbars bigger than I knew existed. It was dirty, nasty, difficult, and we had to move our cars onto the lawn so the suck-truck could pull back where the hose could reach the tank. The guy always came alone, which is why we had to help. There was only one company that would even touch our system, because it was so complicated. I don’t know whose idea it was to set it up that way, but we were willing to do a lot to keep the number of clean-outs down.
Good information.
In the NE, a new system will run about $10,000. It can go higher or lower, all depending on your lot characteristics.
A properly sized system can actually last indefinitely. The key is keeping anything out of your drain field that can affect it’s ability to absorb effluent into the receiving soil. This means having a properly sized septic tank with proper baffles that is pumped as needed.
Basically, for a system to fail, the receiving solid under the field must restrict water from draining enough such that the field stays inundated with moisture. When that happens, the bacteria in the soil that break down the bad stuff go anaerobic, creating a mat that further reduces water absorption. This further floods the field, causing a further anaerobic condition.
So, if the field is on good soil and is properly sized, and the tank is pumped regularly, the system should last forever.
Very informative, thank you.
And thanks to everyone else who responded. I’m not quite so terrified of the unknown now.
I have a very small sceptic system in N. TX. Never used Rid-X or anything else in 14 years, and I only pumped it out once during that time, and was told by the man doing it, that it really didn’t need it, but since he was here I let him anyway. Only my toilet and dishwater goes into the tank. My bathtub, and washer water go out into separate lateral lines. Never had an issue with those either. Some areas may not allow this. I do think this helps tremendously by letting the good bacteria eat away at the solids.
Many want to test your soil these days, and if it doesn’t drain fast enough in a certain amount of time, they insist on a three tank system. Others want you to buy a system that requires an annual inspection which will cost you an additional fee each time, but if you buy another type of system, it doesn’t require any inspection. Get this one, and avoid this extra cost.
At least in my area, I’m not aware of any time limit of when the septic tank has to be pumped out, but only when it is needed.
your regulations in the USA will vary with the state and county level. it will govern construction and maintenance.
regulations on septics and wells are to keep you from polluting yourself. if you are required to do an inspection and pump out (if needed) every few years then it keeps your system and you healthy. a well (not that kind) constructeded and maintained system will last your lifetime.
Be sure to ask the seller about their septic tank maintenance. Ideally, they can provide records of regular pump outs. I would worry if they’ve never done anything. That makes the system a total unknown. It could be on the verge of failing and you’d never know.
I was lucky. The drain field in my house had been completely replaced the year before I bought the house and the seller had records including surveys and photos. So I knew the system was in pretty good shape. However, the first time I had the tank pumped, they found that the inlet baffle had broken causing solids to flow into the drain field. They were able to pump out the field. That could have been a disaster.
When you are considering a house on septic, do consider the savings in sewer fees which can be substantial. My water bill is ~$4 a month. If I was on sewer, it would be almost $100 a month. That makes $200 every 3 years for pumping seem like a steal.
If it helps to have specific numbers, I’m in the Pacific Northwest, outside of Redmond, WA. Our homeowner’s agreement requires that the tank be pumped every three years, it cost us $300 last time. We had it inspected when we moved in, and the company told us that life expectancy for a system here was between thirty and fifty years, and would cost about $40,000 to replace (most of that being the drain field – the tanks themselves are apparently not that expensive).
Yeah, that plus the sewer hookup fee, which can easily come to $20K where I’m looking.