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vgking

Septic Tank and Record Rainfall

vgkg Z-7 Va
13 years ago

Hi there.

it's been a while, had to go to library to post this. My area has had record rain and snow since last Nov. We've not had a problem with the septic system for 7 years until this extremely rainy season set in. Here's the problem :

Our full bath upstairs is vented, our 1/2 bath downstairs is not vented. The ground outside is super saturated and during the last couple of heavy rainfalls (>3") when we flush the upper toilet the lower one "burps" loudly. This tells me that the end of the line that enters the tank is under water so the resulting compressed air is burped via the lower toilet until the tank drains and clears below the end line. This takes about 2 days to stop burping so we are conservative on water use and toilet paper until the burping stops.

My question is - is this burping normal for saturated ground/septic field? If the lower toilet was vented we may never hear a burp so I'm kinda glad it's not vented as we might overload the outgoing pipe with waste and find out the hard way when the lower toilet overflows. Any opinions or advice on this is very welcome.

Thanks, vgkg

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