Septic Excitement

To cap off our Plumbing 2008 Extravaganza, I decided to have our septic tank pumped. Every three years or so you need to have people with an enormous tanker truck come and suck all of the, well, all of the crap out of there: all of the solids that have settled to the bottom to the tank over time and have not decomposed. It's mostly toilet paper. You can use the most eco friendly stuff in the world and it still just sits in there, because there is no motion in the tank to help break it up. It's grease and oils too. Just unpleasant all the way around.


It was fun having the guy come because while I'd had a peek inside the tank when the plumber was here getting rid of the clog of grease (ours) and baby wipes (all visitors are hereby put on notice! No baby wipes in the toilet!) I hadn't seen how the whole production works. It's complicated and simple at the same time. Stuff flows into the main tank from a pipe connected to all of the drains in the house. Solids settle to the bottom. Water and pure liquid trickles into a second tank which has a rudimentary filter on the pipe. It would let, say, a sesame seed through but not anything bigger. That pure liquid goes through an even smaller filter into a third tank with a pump in it. There is a float in there, and when the level rises high enough a pump kicks on and pushes the liquid out through a long pipe to our drainfield. There the water percolates out through the soil and re-enters the universe at large.


It's simple until something goes wrong. If your pipe clogs, or solids get somewhere they aren't supposed to be then the liquid has nowhere to go. And if you put too much liquid in your drainfield it doesn't have time to ease into the environment and things can go horribly horribly awry. So forgive me if I'm a bit paranoid about the whole operation. Even though we're only at the 2.5 year mark, I decided to have the tank pumped just to see how things were going.

Turns out, we're pretty good. There was plenty of crap (hehe) in there, but it wasn't super full or anything. And the pumper guy was happy to show me how everything worked, and even how to clean the filter myself. This lets me troubleshoot some of the more simple problems, instead of calling a professional each time. All in all, an interesting experience!

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As a palette cleanser, behold an apple! Our mini-orchard of 5 trees planted last year are going to bear a miniature crop, but they are our own apples and they will be delicious.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 4
Eggs laid this year: 46