yes i was expecting the one about the spinach and other greens leaves, we are kept abreast of the news world wide. but you are confusing the 2 surely the water that was sued to wash those greesn may have been the contamnient? and if the suers would have washed them then maybe nothing would have happened, or it could have been contaminated in the packing shed? i'm not sure if they ever realy found out any one thing to blame so just threw a blanket over it. we have the same products on our supemarket shelves come from all poins of australia, thee ash never been any health problem from people eating this product i ahve consumed my fair sahre of it, the packet does say wash before eating, but does everyone/anyone?? that is of course and etirely different scenero to someone growing as i ahve suggested i would above ground crops that we all wash in any case and most ge cooked. so best not for us to confuse the boundries let officialdom do that they do it best. yes there are and will be pathogens in septic water even into teh leach field but microbes and worms take care of them in that environment, the ae different ecoli bacteria all around the place the garden soils you work will have them not all are cause fatalities and some a stomach ache that is not debilatating. but no one is suggesting you drink the septic water or not wash hands thoroughly after all garden work, and no one is suggesting root crops which if eaten raw could very well pose a health problem, but if washed and cooked then no problem the health authorities say this. like they say if you tend to personnal hand hygene you will lessens you risk to different viruses passed on from contact of contaminated surfaces generally in public places. so again i ask you do you have hard case evidence of major group health issues and the health system being swamped maybe, i dunno a pandemic?? i see recall of meat products in the USA is this to be blamed on leach fields or bad processing practises? len

Castoff, Sounds like you have systems that are similar to Vermont's. We also have open and closed systems, distribution boxes, etc. The 2 systems with pumps that I described both had leaching areas remote from and higher than the tank and so had to be pumped. In this area if it is all clay soil, I can almost gurantee that a raised leaching area would be required..here they are called "mound systems." In my dealings (until new State laws were passed 3 or 4 yrs ago) each town or city had its own regulations. The smaller towns did nothing. They left it up to home owners and local contractors to design and build their own systems. In most of these cases they were rural communities and the landowners had many acres...the practice was to just build something big enough and to heck with any fancy design. The State of VT now has to issue permits for all designs. The trade off for this regulation is that they will now accept "modern" systems that allow systems in soils that would never work before. When a system is being designed a "perk test:" has to be done on the soil. A hole is dug with a back hoe and the engineer/designer establishes soil conditions at different levels. Then water is poured into the hole and a timing is done to determine how long it takes for the water to leach out. I can tell you that in the civilized areas here, the clay soild conditions that you describe, especially with seasonal high water, would never pass and would require a built up mound system I must confess that I haven't fooled with systems for about 8 years and don't know the specs on the new systems that are allowed or if the new tanks are 2 chambered. I know that many of the designers are requiring filters on the outgoing side of the tank. Possibly this serves the same purpose as the 2 chamber tank. Once a year, you pull the filter out of the inspection hole on the outgoing side and hose it off. I hope that the PO finds some solution. It would be too bad to find out that money had been spent on a design that doesn't work. If it only floods on a seasonal basis, then it does sound like a design problem. If that was the case and it wasn't too terrible, I would investigate anything that might lessen the water flow to the system.....low flow fixtures....toilets, shower heads, etc. I guess I'm trying to think of ways to save someone money, but this system could be beyond that. I don't know what part of Canada the PO is in. I owned property in rural Quebec in a small towwn. I can tell you that there was no regulation (20 yrs ago) over septic systems...at least no regulation that was enforced unless it was a newly constructed building. This town was small enough that the town clerk's office was in the living room of his house and was only open 2 nights per week:-)

Hah, funny Treebird, "wet crappy soil". I have decided to remove the Quercus Alba "rooted acorn" MAYBE,. If I remove the Q. Alba acorn/future tree seedling, I will have no trees RIGHT INFRONT OF MY HOUSE, ON THE SOUTH SIDE. So if I then keep the seedlings I have planted previously where they are, it will be a small wait, perhaps 5 years before the trees I have planted near my house, on the south side, will start to shade some of my house from the southwest to the southeast. To be clear in what I am saying, "I have 2 Compton's oak seedlings, near the eastern exposure of my" house".. On the "Western exposure, there is a " Swamp Chestnut tree" several feet from the Compton's oak seedlings. But, it is best to be able to possibly be able to keep tree tissue and plant regeneration possibilities going straight ahead with the trees I ,have. I am now depending on my 2 " Compton's oak" seedlings. Which eventually will be wanting to "host" some seedlings. As far as my homes southern "light exposure", there are "energies", that can be used by "whatever force" is using our post ideas.

Just checking in....I got my 5 red spruce seedlings from NH Nursery back in the spring and I planted them immediately. I liked that they left a lot of dirt on the roots and just threw them in the shipping bag, rather than wash everything off the roots and tie them up etc like other places. This seems to have helped them settle in because every single one survived, grew and handled all the stresses of season change without me watering them at all. Here in northern NJ, we had two heat wave/semi-droughts and they went through them with no problem. I attribute this to both the fact that they are native to my neighborhood and that they were all planted in part sun or almost full shade, depending. They each put on 2-3 inches of growth so they're still very tiny. I expect something similar next year. And honestly, I've read about 100 year old red spruce that are only a few feet high. They have high shade tolerance but will grow super slow in that deep shade, so it seems their growth is super dependent on sun intensity. So I look forward to seeing how each of my 5 grow differently depending on the different conditions I've placed them in. Very happy I skipped the norway spruce in favor of this beautiful native tree!