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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Ironic! Just yesterday I started probing around to find our tank so we can have it pumped. We've been here four years and we aren't certain when it was last pumped or even what kind of tank it is; so it's a good idea to look. A previous owner removed the marker so now I have to probe.
In terms of pumping, it depends on what's put into a tank and how much. Seven person-years is a rule of thumb I’ve heard. We’re a 2-person household. Bath and toilet goes into the septic system while kitchen and laundry goes into a gray water pit. We’re probably on the long side of the rule of thumb.
I'm hardly an expert, but here's my understanding: Virtually every tank receives some material that's not biodegradable and that material builds up in the tank no matter how well the system works. Enzymes or bacteria that chew up soaps, Greece, detergents are available, and accelerants that sped liquidation of solid material. But still, solid material builds up.
As indigestible material increases in a tank (two tanks for double chambered systems), tank volumes are reduced. Waste spends less time in the tanks and undigested material starts going into the leech field. There is potential for contaminating the surface water table in the area. There also is potential to clog the leech field. By the time serious odor and backed up water is noticed a leech field may be damaged.
Anyway, I think that a good pumping company can say how often a particular tank should be pumped. Around here, it's about $150 cdn to have one pumped during the summer. It's much higher ($2000 I've heard) during the winter because waste can't be spread while the ground is frozen and has to be trucked about 3 hours to a large city treatment plant. Anyway, at $150, I'm not going to fool around with it. I'm just going to have it pumped regularly.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
I'm not sure that anything special has to be done after a tank is pumped. There would be plenty of bacteria left in the tank and the tank would fill with water soon enough. I'd probably would run some water into it because it seems like a good idea and put in some bio-mass. Old hamburg and fish guts are favoured around here. I use a pound of brewer's yeast twice a year. I think that starter additives are available. I've never been certain what yogert is supposed to do. I'm not sure the yogert bacteria act anaerobically to breakdown waste. It might accelerate the process though. If so, then yogert wouldn't do much until waste was already in the tank.
Well, getting ours pumped is a little bigger deal than for most. The tank is a home made double chambered job. Some of the construction uses cement blocks and I guess would be prone to cracking if something drove over it. There are 8' cedar logs on top for protection. If there is a small access cover, the marker is long gone and I have no way to locate a cover. Guess I have to hoe off the soil on top the logs and pull them off the tank, and be very careful with the hoe down-pressure I think. The tank is long and narrow. It’ll take a bit of planning to figure how to dig without driving on the tank and pile the soil so the logs can be pulled off and on and the hole can be back-filled without driving on the leech line. Bunch of constraints here. Wonder how I’m going to do it?
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
I've heard that bleach isn't good as a water purifier unless the water has little suspended organic material. Chlorine bonds to most organic compounds, including bacteria. Water with a lot of suspended organics takes the chlorine out of solution and has to be filtered before chlorine is effective at killing bacteria. By its nature, there's plenty of suspended organic material in a septic tank. I believe that’s why septic systems have fair tolerance to bleach, although they probably work better if none is used.
The story came to me from a municipal treatment plant worker when I was wondering why time was being taken for shipping mobile water treatment plants to camps near Rwanda during the troubles there. I figured that people were dying in the camps, and planeloads of bleach should have been the emergency response. As is often the case, things aren't as simple as I first see them it seems.
I'm curious about additives. Some are labeled 'safe bacterial additives.' My sense of the products is that they accelerate the decomposition process. A question is whether they're useful and harmless when used as directed, harmful or just not necessary in a properly working system?
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Such puns are mild compared to the ones used by one of our local pumpers. His vehicles are named things like 'Turd Hearse' (there are others). His company motto seems to be 'Nobody sticks their nose in our business' at least that's what's written on the trucks. I suppose he got tired of other people making jokes about him so he just outdid them all.
In terms of regulations, two winters ago local pumpers had to stop spreading during the winter. Sludge is stored and heated until 40' or so tanker trailers are full and then they are driven over 3-hours and dumped into a city system. The cost is about $2000 to have your tank pumped during the winter compared to about $200 during the summer. However, the summer price may be going up since a local field used for spreading can't be used after September.
I understand the need for regulations. I just wish the people who make them would come up with viable solutions as well. In Canada, big cities get billions of government funding for their infrastructure projects. Country people just get more regulations.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Yes, I know these are tough issues. Spelling is my toughest issue and I corrected hurst (a low sandy hillock) with hearse in a previous post. More spell check dependence at the expense of thought. Our pumper has more choice slogans and maybe I'll notice some more.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Yes big pictures are hard to see. Country people provide many of their own utility systems and maintenance and also pay zip property tax. Big government 'infrastructure projects' that pop up every time the economy tanks are justified as needed for economic stimulation rather than as directly related to the costs of providing utilities. Guess I'd just like to see my country household share of this economic stimulation in the form of some help upgrading our septic system. Might be nice to see a little economic stimulation around here too.
Of course, I should keep in mind that there is a grant available that pays 2/3rd the costs of installing pitless adapters on old drilled wells and converting to submersible pumps. I guess that not too many city people would benefit from these grants. Big pictures are indeed very hard to see sometimes.
My dad was retired in Lake Havasu AZ. I think the city was around 50,000 population when I visited. I don't believe there were any municipal treatment facilities. Everybody had their own septic systems and most were on standard 1/4 or 1/3 acre lots. Even though the city is built on desert sand, I wonder what will happen when these thousands of leech fields start failing? I believe that Chicago never had that problem. Far as I know even into the '60's the city had sewers but didn't bother with treatment. It all went into a canal and on to the Mississippi. There probably was a lot of federal and state tax money that went into fixing the problem.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Yikes! Maybe we should start collecting these. Maybe publish them and divide the proceeds with half to Dennis for running the site and half to a member elected by all symbolically in recognition of the quality of their posts. I might win that one hands down. Maybe I should think about my choice of language considering the context.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Good grief. Creative I'd say; just guy humour my wife probably would say.
I used to go to my boxing gym to get away from my now X. I didn't have this Board then but I guess it would have been about as good as the gym and saved me the trips across town.
Gee, I used to make the senior welterweight cut (147 1/2 lbs. but that's minus a lot of sweat). That was some years and about 30 lbs. ago. Umm, in the context of this discussion I just don't think I'll go there.
I'm a rested boater too, or rather paddler . So, where is paradise? I figured it out. It's a creek with enough water to paddle most of the way and no portage trails marked on a 1:50,000 topo map. There are trails, they just aren’t on the map. That would be about 5 miles from home.
Sure is surprising how far up the creek the pike and bass go. I suppose if we would have looked for a trail around a small falls, we would have found brook trout--even better. I could have done guy humour too.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Well, my brother-in-law and I went back to the creek, which is one of many around here we still can explore. We intended to line the canoe up a least one rapid that has a couple of 10' - 15' falls to a small lake and then maybe have a go at a second and third portage to other lakes.
We ended up fishing at the bottom of the first rapid and caught a few smallmouth. Couldn't find a portage trail but bush-crashed to the lake and scouted the rapid. On the way back, it was hot and we started swimming in the pools at the bases of the falls--water coming down rock walls into deep pools. Except for the pine and spruce, it was almost like a South Seas movie set.
Never did take the canoe up. It is true that work can compromise paradise, and with more age, paradise equals less work. Dang! Now that I'm thinking about work, I wonder if I really am going to pump the septic tank this summer. I have to dig a pretty big hole to get all the cedar logs off the top of the tank. Maybe in some contexts paradise is a manhole cover but I hope not.
Septic tank construction around here tends to follow Billy's notion that pumping isn't really needed--well maybe every 15-years or so. Except for recent installations, the tanks aren't installed to make pumping easy. The 'don't pump unless it's needed' idea has worked pretty well for many people around here (although I don't know if I'd like to use a dug well for drinking water everywhere) and pumping my tank is going to be a lot of work. Like capitalism, there are just too many choices. Don't know. Maybe like the fish, I'll just keep swimming.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
What Ed says is good advice. I know it's starting to late for pumping around here. Our neighbours had theirs pumped once just for the heck of it. That was the winter it froze. Once it freezes, that's pretty much it for the winter. Trouble is that frost goes 4’ and more deep here but tanks and leech fields can’t be installed below frost or the system won’t work. During the winter, systems depend on composting heat and warm water input to keep them from freezing. Some people just run their toilets into the septic system and every thing else into gray water pits. We have a pit but run bath water into the septic system and have less worry about it freezing.
Companies can put steam into the tank but not the leech field, but even so a tank will tend to just freeze again. If there's little snow cover in December, some people put bales of straw on the ground over the tank and field. Guess that would work for recently pumped tanks too.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Well yeah, I can see myself making city party small-talk about septic system mechanics. I spend most of my life in cities and probably never quite got the small talk quite right. My family were dust bowl farmers forced off the land into L.A.. Some years back I started thinking of myself as an 'educated hick'--explains a lot. Happy to have escaped the city and my small-talk fits better around here.
I'm going to try to dig my big hole and get the tank pumped this month. I'll also try to come up with some way to make it easier to pump. I'd like to think that I'll find an access cover somewhere under the logs. Then I can cut out a section of the logs on top of the tank, put a well half-tile and cover over the hole on top of the logs and put a bunch of blue foam in the tile.
The immediate trouble with doing my big-hole is that I've spent the last two days with a different pumping subject. We had a 4-hector fire near here. Provincial water bombers and fire crew had to be called in. We ended up with close to three miles of 1 1/2 fire hose and four pumps laid. The hose came from my township, the Province and the landowner. As long as you have to have a fire, it's handy that the landowner has a family logging business and can bring their own pumps, dozer and crew.
We got most of the equipment torn down and separated yesterday. Our hose is draped over the maintenance garage. When it dries, we'll probably spend the next two days reorganizing the equipment and re-packing all that dang hose. It has sort of slowed down my septic tank project.
A comment for Mark and Paul about an old thread: Even with foot-valves and strainers on the suction hoses, The Provincial crew dumped their tool boxes on the ground and put the boxes over the ends of their suction hoses to reduce chances of clogging the strainers.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Cutter: That smoke was from a bunch of fires in Quebec. We got the smoke as well for a couple of days before the wind changed direction. Some of the fires may have been fought entirely by water bomber because ground crews would have to get in by helicopter in many places. The fires did produce a positive news story at least up here. A number of northern communities were ordered ‘to be evacuated.’ In one community, a native leader and volunteers refused evacuation and managed to save their community.
Quite a few fires around here but we're fortunate there haven't been more. We had the first significant rain in about a month a couple days ago. As fires go, ours was a nothing. The only thing that made it significant was that it started close to residences. That also meant it was discovered quickly. We thought it burnt 4 hectors but a GPS survey puts it closer to two. It started in an old barn, jumped a pine tree thicket and burnt closer than 100-yards from a trailer park. It also came within 50 yards of residences across a road.
Actually, the township does have an old 3" pump and some hose. In practice, if you can't carry a pump on your back, you can't get it in service fast enough to much good. Most places, a vehicle can't necessarily drive to a water source. However, the 3" pump might have done us some good. We had the fire controlled in about four hours, but we were still pumping water on the barn foundation a day later. Probably would have taken two people to hold the hose down though. We're lucky it wasn't another larger barn that is packed to the rafters with logs. We'd probably still be pumping water on it.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Cutter: I think the N.A. forestry standard is 1 1/2" pumps. We're converting our hoses to standard forestry quick-connect fittings this summer. The pump/motors are often dropped out of helicopters and carried to the site on peoples’ backs. Something that takes two people to carry doesn't work well if it has to be bush-crashed over rough ground. Sure would be nice to have the flow from a 3" pump though.
We have mutual aid among towns and rural areas around here. Several of the towns have pumpers etc. that respond to fires that are not threatening the forest. Unfortunately, our current Provincial government is 'business oriented' rather than mutual aid oriented. Our township of 250 population and about 650 property tax payers paid the entire bill for our fire because it started most likely by arson on private land. Of course, if we’re weren’t here the fire would have been burning a Provincial paid about a mile away in no time and Crown land a whole lot sooner.
One thing about water bombers is that it takes time for a spotter plane to survey the sight and figure directions and release points. Ground crews have to be pulled out of the site while the bombers work. So, we stood around watching a line of pine trees near a road get more and more smoky, and the water drops weren’t going there. That road was the way back out.
All we could do was work some periphery, and the bush was starting to burn near our staging area. All a matter of timing I guess. The provincial crews were running a hose to the tree line while the bombers worked. We worked toward the hose line with backpack pumps while the bombers left and met the hose crew in the middle. All a matter of timing, but close timing. Fire jumps the road and it gets real hard to drive back out of there, and this wasn't a real forest fire. I’m not sure I’d want to fight a real one.
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Septic Tank Pumping -- Do you need to
Nor my back! Ironically, I pretty much went directly from a chiropractor appointment in town to fighting a fire.
A novel featured an area near here. The author described the people as ‘not so much friendly as willing to offer a hand if asked.’ The author must have spent some time around here. There's so few people that we have to collectively take care of ourselves. There's just not enough wealth to support much of a bureaucracy. Our township Reeve and one Councilor were among the first on the fire scene and spent more time than most actually fighting it. We can't support pure bureaucrats or pure politicians either.
When I get back to my own septic tank pumping, following my neighbour's well, the fire and a few other things. I know that if I mention that I'm starting down at the store everybody will know about it and several people will just sort of show up. I do the same. Pretty good way to live I think.
I suppose if we'd become a news story then politicians from senior governments would have showed up, put on safety boots and hard hats and posed for photo-ops. You can tell people with big pay cheques and nothing real to do because you see bunches of pictures of them in funny hats. However, the funny hats don't make me feel that they're anything like I am. I just wish they'd go flip pancakes somewhere else. Too bad everybody can't live like we do around here I guess. Now I'm really off topic so I'll stop.
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05-23-2002, 06:38 
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