SOIL CONDITIONS
How does a septic system work
When Does my septic tank need pumped
Can you install a septic system in clay soil?
Unfortunately, if there is too much solid clay in your soil, a standard system cannot be installed. Clay is very thick and expands when water is added, so if there is a lot of clay in your soil, the wastewater from your tank will not be drained or treated, causing many problems. Fear not! There are ways to avoid this problem. You can always find a new drainfield area or dig deeper/ shallower. Just because soil is classified as clay, it isn't always unsuitable; if it is a very sandy clay, it can still be used!
A septic system is a sewer system installed for homes and dwellings that can't otherwise be hooked up to the standard city sewer. The tank is installed first, coming out of your home. Sewage waste enters through the upper part of the tank through a baffle. The baffle is a fitting used to slow down the waste coming into the tank from your house. The incoming sewage needs to be slowed down so it doesn't disturb the layers forming inside the tank. Inside the tank, you get 3 layers that form. Sludge formed on the bottom, composed of organic waste and toilet paper; scum floats on the top of the tank, composed of fats and oil. Lastly, effluent. Effluent is the most important layer of the septic tank. Effluent is just a very, very gross and dirty water composed of organic material that neither floats nor sinks. Effluent has a lot of bad bacteria in it, including E. coli. Once a septic tank is filled, every time a fixture in the home is used, the water will come into the tank, and the force causes a bit of effluent to go out the other side of the tank. This effluent then travels out the outlet of the tank into the drain field. The drainfeild consits of multiple drainage trenches that are used to distribute the effluent into the earth soil. The natural earth soil has beneficial bacteria and oxygen that turn the bad wastewater into good wastewater. This is very important so the water gets treated properly before entering the ecosystem once again.
A common misconception homeowners have is seeing their septic tank opened and it being full to the very top! Now this may seem like it's full when, in reality, it is just a healthy system. As described in other systems, you have three layers in a tank. Sludge on the bottom, effluent in the middle, and scum on the top. You only need to get your tank pumped when the sludge and scum layers take up more than 25 to 33 percent of the tank's capacity. Now this may sound crazy because you are seeing that your tank is full to the top. But all that room that is being taken up is the effluent in the middle, and every time a fixture is used, excess effluent leaves the tank into the drainfeild. This system lets you use your septic tank for so much longer compared to just pumping it every time it is full.
how does a DRAINFILD fail
A drainfield can fail in a variety of ways. Broken pipes, broken distribution components, and system overloading. The most common can be overloading. If you move into a new home that is on septic, you may not know how much it was used before your arrival. Excessive water usage can overload the system more than it was used to, causing the biomat to build up much more, slowing the drainage of effluent wastewater. Once this biomat becomes too thick, it can no longer drain water properly, causing your system to back up into your home. Now the cool thing about drainfeilds is that they can go through a rest period, which is giving time for the drainfield to sit and let the biomat break down until it becomes usable again; sometimes this takes as little as 6 months. In some cases, homeowners have two drainfeilds installed in case of this accident, and when this happens, they switch to the secondarydrainfeild allowing the first to rest and recover. Now, with new SludgeHammer technologies, the cost of this can be cut almost in half by adding aerobic treatment in the tank and lightening the load on the drainfeild.