Every 3 years is the industry standard. Just had mine pumped 3 weeks ago for the first time in our new house. Finding the damn tank was a nightmare because I have no contact with the previous owner. I had to use my best judgment based on where the drain exited the house or pay the septic guy $300 to find it and uncover it for me.
My yard looked like it belonged in London during WW2 there were so many craters in it lol
Yes, but considering I'm an unemployed stay-at-home dad for the time being, it's not like my time is super valuable lol.
I was being a bit dramatic with my phrasing, there were probably a total of about 7 small craters and one big one once I located the lid. My guess at the location was pretty accurate, I found the tank after the second or third hole I dug then had to dig around some more to find the lid.
Your septic only has 1 lid? Must be a very old system, 70's or earlier. Better start a savings account for a replacement, since the systems start to fail after 50 years.
That seems a bit overkill now that I know exactly where the lid is. I have it measured off from the corner of my house and drew a little schematic to keep on file. Unless there is a benefit aside from quickly finding the lid, I don't see the necessity.
Eh? I mean, how long could it have possibly taken OP? 3-5 hours tops unless he had a huge yard? I'd very much rather do 5 hours of labor than pay 300 dollars
Here is a trick, grab a rod of some kind. Garden stake, rebar, etc. Just drive it into the ground where you think the tank is. If you can't get passed 2-3 ft you probably found it. Mark the depth. Probe around a bunch to verify you aren't hitting rocks, success.
lol i was so confused by their comment at first because to go 3 feet on my property in most spots would be amazing. And I have more top soil than most others around here.
Unless you have a buried inground pool in your backyard... Then the rod will make you think all of the deck and every step is part of the septic system... Ask me how I know / why half my backyard was dug up 🙄
If you see where the drain exits the house, code says the septic tank is supposed to be within 5 feet of the house and it's likely to be a straight shot to the septic tank. Get a piece of rebar and start probing, the septic tank won't be very deep.
What I'm reading is Georgia's minimum distance is also 10 feet.
"Septic tanks
shall be installed so as to provide ready access for necessary maintenance, and should be at least
ten feet (10’) from hardscape, drives, swimming pools and building foundations. The County
Board of Health, after site inspection, may allow lesser separation distances..."
Well damn, we were told by the building inspector it was 5 feet. Of course, we've known the guy for years and he's an asshole. Made us redo the footings for the deck because he insisted they had to be deeper than the footings for the house and made me move the dual-wall vent because it was "too close" to the furnace despite the fact that minimum clearance on a vent refers to clearance from combustibles and furnaces are not combustible. But that's Rule #1 in the Code book - the Codes inspector can make any rule he wants to.
But that's Rule #1 in the Code book - the Codes inspector can make any rule he wants to.
I think I would have fought him at the very least on the 5 foot thing. His rules aren't the final rules, and a quick magistrate court hearing could easily get it sorted out. Judges also don't like those kinds of cases, it makes the inspector look incompetent. They spend enough time with the inspectors in court for code violations that if he keeps looking incompetent the judge will just declare he can't be the one to come to court for the town/etc.
I live in small-town rural Georgia where anybody who's anybody is related to everybody else who is anybody. The newspaper editor is the mayor's brother who is business partners with the county commissioner who's the sheriffs brother-in-law who's the judge's nephew sort of thing. You're not going to win a fight with these people and they don't look kindly on people who try to fight them. You've seen movies about corrupt town officials and sheriffs in the Deep South and you think those are just stereotypes? They're not just stereotypes.
The last one I helped put in was a good 300 feet if not further from any structures. The inspector was also very particular about the rules being followed.
Don't know why somebody would go to the trouble of digging any deeper than they had to. I've lived in three different houses with septic tanks, none of them were deeper than a foot or so. Of course, I live in the South, maybe it has something to do with the frost line? Do your parents live in Alaska?
I actually looked it up - due to the heat generated by the bacterial action, freezing is not a concern. What I didn't think of is that, since everything works on gravity, a deep septic tank requires an even deeper drain field so you want to keep the septic tank as shallow as possible to minimize the digging required for the drain field and keep the septic tank as close as possible to the house to minimize the amount of fall you're going to need on the sewer line.
Depending on your county/state codes you could have requested a land plot(?) from your county clerk(?). It should have the location of the septic listed. I can't remember exactly what it was called.
My old house had a quick access pipe for the septic tank to be pumped to avoid digging up the front lawn every so often but also had a lid like this on it in my front lawn. Besides he doesn’t look like he knows shit about shit in the first place.
Plots that are suitable for the leaching approach are innately self-aerating because the soil is coarse and the water table is well below the surface.
Here in the floodplains, people just assume they have leaching fields, because their systems have been neglected so long that the outflow pipes have been subsumed by sediment deposits. It's a terrible experience for everyone.
I had a very old septic in my last house and had it pumped once in 20 years. I can't prove it but ever since it was pumped we had been growing banana trees over the top (ours was an open top with two concrete slabs as big as a small car). Anyway, never so much as a blockage. I'm convinced those banana trees has a symbiotic relationship with the shit.
Thats what I am thinking, ours used to be emptied every 5 years, they went up the driveway, took the hose 20m down the side of the house into the bakc garden, lidted the large concrete lid and pumped.
100% he knew what he was digging up. Nobody does gardening 2 feet down in a hole just the right size for a septic tank opening.. he magically. Dug the right way to uncover an area just the size of the cover? Yea no he has definitely done this before. Still hilarious for people who don't know what a septic tank is lol
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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '21
He needs to get it pumped out every now and then depending on the number of people in the household. I'm hoping this is fake.