Trying to save drainfield...

Hopefully I can get some advice about my specific situation! I have a basic gravity septic system, original to the house built in 1986. There is a tank (the main cover is under a pathway leading to the backyard), there is a small inspection cover where you can see the outlet, about 10' of pipe to the distribution box, which has seven laterals in it. Also a clean out port right next to the house.

We bought the house in 2002 and did 3 tank empties, but the last one was done this past November, (before that 7 years earlier), when the first floor toilet was not flushing and was backing up into the shower stall. If you let it sit overnight, it would drain down enough to get another flush or two and then back up again.

That started happening again last week, and this time it did not drain down at all. First backup was Friday morning, we went away for the weekend and when we returned no change. I dug up the main cover and it was filled to the brim, but water was fairly clean looking.

Called septic company to pump and inspect with camera, and his opinion was that drain field is failing. He also dug up dist. box, which I had never known location of before. So now we are waiting to see if drain field recovers at all.

I ordered Oxy-Septic and will disperse that into the d-box when it gets here Tuesday. I also added some Roebic products into the d-box and hosed it around for about 10 minutes.

Questions: Can I just stick a basic brush effluent filter into the outlet port in the main tank. Or is it more involved than that? Can I add a aeration system into the cleanout port? Or does it have to be submerged in liquid to work? My understanding is it would be bad to put it into the tank as it will stir the solids up.

I also ordered one of those soil probes, ans was thinking of putting a few hundred holes around the drain field area with it. Seems logical to break holes into the biomat and also get more air down there?

Thanks for reading any any advice!!

 

None of that stuff is going to fix a failed drain field.
Punching a bunch of holes in the ground will be useless.
As the D box and tank are pumped if a ton of water runs back from the drain field back toward the tank as there draining them then there's an issue with the drain field.
If you have PVC drain lines it may buy you some time to have them Hydro blasted.

 

I've read accounts of people who have had success with some of the chemical treatments, especially the oxy-clean stuff. Or aeration. Or should I just jump right to the $15K plus septic system replacement, lol? I'd be happy to put that off for even a little while.

I did look into the hydro-jetting, but did not have much luck. Called three places, and non would give an estimate over the phone. One said they call me back nut never did, the other sent a guy out, but he called the septic expert in his company, who said it may cause more harm then good. I figured they were being honest because following that advice meant no business for them. Maybe I should look further into it.

Yes, there did seem to be a lot of water flowing back from the drainfield which is why I believe it is in trouble. But I would like to exhaust some other options first if it could result in prolonging the system. I've already taken my washing machine off the system, and will do the same with the kitchen sink/dishwashing machine next if the system is not completely dead yet.

 

How much room do you have for a new drain field. If no room, then efforts to restore this one become more urgent.

Disgusting, but put your toilet paper in a plastic bag to keep it out of the system. You can tell I've been there.

Any wet spots at the end of your field?

Bud

 

No wet areas above/around field. Already doing that with the tp, lol. Not much room for another drain field, and apparently where I live they make you go through the health dept. and an engineer to design a whole new system. So I don't mind spending a few hundred $$ on methods to try to get some life back into the system, even if it may be a long shot. But I want to try to do it in a reasonably intelligent manner.

 

I am wondering why your field has failed at a relatively young age. If you've had an expert out and they said your field has failed they almost certainly provided a cause. What did they say?

Yes, you will have to go through your Health or Environmental Services Dept. That is normal and required almost everywhere and repairing or replacing the drain field is almost always expensive which is why it's so important to treat it properly. How far outside a city do you live? Is tying into city sewer an option?

 

It does sound more like a abrupt clog of some kind; if the system was operating normally in November when it was last pumped.

Was there any recent change in what was being disposed of down the drain like the addition of a Garbage Disposal when there hadn't been one before, or a member of the Family began using HandiWipes, or maybe some Feminine Hygiene products.

Now that you know the layout of the system better, I would examine every bottleneck for obstructions. I gather that there was no filter on the outlet from the Septic Tank to catch any unwanted solid debris from exiting.

My question is why such a sudden deterioration in absorption, because the Leach Field isn't like a faucet that flows fine one day and gets turned off and ceases to function the next . . . . it's usually a very gradual reduction. But maybe that's what you actually experienced ?

 

When you look into the small inspection port where you can see the outlet pipe, is there a wall you can see around the perimeter of the port and extending down into the liquid preventing the grease floating on the entire surface of the liquid from gravitating towards the outlet pipe? There should be such a wall, or a small baffle over the exit pipe opening itself, which if broken off will result in all that grease (scum) going down to the drain field, impregnating it and making it fail in short order.

Is the distribution box full of liquid that fails to dissipate (down the drain field pipes) in timely fashion? Did the company that you called last do an inspection of some of the pipework and verify any clogging that would require a snake?

 

Thanks for the replies!

He didn't offer anything definitive - age of the system, sludge getting into the laterals, biomat not allowing effluent to drain. There is city sewer/water just up the road from us but not in my section yet. It's not cheap either...

 

Yes, that's exactly what I thought - why no flow whatsoever all of a sudden? But nothing new has been flushed - we have a 3 year old but she is really good at knowing what not to flush. If I use a baby wipe on her she tells me every time that it doesn't go in the toilet, lol. That's why I pulled off the cover hoping to see a tp clog by the inlet into the tank. We did have kids over the night before, so who knows what they may have flushed, though doubtful since they have septic at home too. On the other hand, anytime the upstairs tub was drained after a bath, the downstairs toilet would bubble and sometimes not flush properly, but no overflow into the shower stall until last week.

For all I know it may be fine once the tank fills up again and starts flowing into the drain field - but if not then I am looking at another pump out. So I want to do the sodium percarbonate and even if the system is slow, we can conserve water a lot to keep it alive until we are more financially ready for a new system.

I also want to figure out the simplest filter to add at the tank outlet.

 

Yes, I saw the wall/ baffle when I looked into the inspection port. The septic guy used a camera and saw sludge in the main pipe leading to the d-box. Then he dug up the d-box, but didn't camera the laterals. I should have asked him to, my bad. He sucked as much as he could out of the laterals/ d-box, but water was flowing back out of the laterals into the d-box, and I assume back into the tank over the next several days. Because when I pulled the cover off again a few days later, the tanks seemed a lot fuller than it should have been after being completely emptied only a few days earlier and very little water use in the house during that time... I don't think the water table was high because we hadn't had much rain. On the other hand, I did have my lawn sprinkler going every other day for over an hour above the drain field, but I don't know if that would be enough to have in impact.

I dumped the Roebic stuff into the d-box and hosed it for awhile, and the d-box never got more than half full, so hopefully that is a good sign.

 

I'm thinking if any type of flow is restored I should install this on the outlet pipe in the tank?

 

I installed a filter similar to that a few years ago (a Zabel) when I was warned that my concrete baffle was deteriorating (which then would allow floating debris in the scum layer to exit the tank).

So I now check in on my outlet twice a year (spring and fall), pull the plastic filter and hose it down for a few minutes, and put it back in . . . . so far it hasn't really had to do anything because the baffle is still functioning; but it certainly does provide a level of comfort knowing that all solids are being confined to the tank.

It's a form of pleasure that is lost on most folks I guess.

 

Large amounts of water backing up through the distribution box and into the septic tank means some change in geology or hydrology that you may want to investigate. Try stopping the lawn watering, waiting a week, and then checking for excess water in the drain field (check at the D-box).