who does one hire to find the boundaries of a septic field?
Loster
5 years ago
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PPF.
5 years agolyfia
5 years agoRelated Discussions
Septic Drain Field: Leach rock or vaults?
Comments (9)We are building a house with 5 bedrooms (actually adding onto an existing house) and had to go from a 3 bedroom to 5 bedroom septic system - due to space limitations we had to go with the chamber system (Infiltrator is the only approved in VA) We had to hire a soils engineer who was a complete idiot and couldn't read the chart right - we ended up designing our system ourselves and having him stamp the plans (I am a Civil Engineer so at least knew a little bit about site drainage and issues) It reduced the size of our drain field in half over a conventional system. I would HIGHLY Recommend you double check your engineers calcs (if you can) no matter which system you use - just because they are a "Certified" soils engineer doesn't really mean anything in my book - Our "Certified Guy" had us putting in 2 more runs that we didn't need just because he didn't know how to read the chart right - and he had supposedly desinged 100's of these (feel sorry for the people who didn't check and probably installed more than they needed) We actually did the installation ourselves (VERY EASY all you do is dig a trench and snap the pieces together) - we installed the optional test ports (which my husband loves) you can open them up and stick a stick doen to see how much water is collected in the system and make sure they are working properly (when we took out our old system - 2 of the 6 lines were clogged and weren't even working and didn't look like they had worked in years. We have had ours in operation for 10 months now and all lines seem to be working great. I would HIGHLY recommend going with this system....See MoreSeptic drainage field (slow draining)
Comments (15)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:-)...See MoreSo now my septic and leach field are in trouble
Comments (26)Before I go, let me apologize. I did not mean to get anyone's knickers in a knot. I did come looking for expert and technical information so that I could do the job right. Just because I cannot do it absolutely legally does not mean that I can't do it correctly and safely and that is my primary objective. I do tend to believe that we are over-regulated and that the regulators can make it harder than it needs to be to live comfortably and safely, but I am not a general scofflaw. Still, I came here for help and then I tried to explain why some of the help wasn't really helpful to my situation, but....I am grateful for all of the responses that were directed towards the technical side, and if I overreacted to being told some things, I am sorry. I will proceed with caution and with consideration for my property, for my neighbors property and for .... everything....See Moreadvice on old septic & leach field
Comments (4)First, if there is a lot of large debris in there they may not be able to pump it out. And second, if you ever go to sell the place, it would need to be fixed properly before selling (especially if someone needs to get a loan which requires an inspection). It's better to fix it right. It currently sounds like a health and safety hazard. Do it while the weather is decent. I'm not sure what zone you're in, but if the ground freezes you may not be able to address the problem. If you hire someone to put in a new tank they may need to do a percolation test to determine the absorption rate of the soil. You could be talking thousands of dollars (for removal, new tank, install, etc.) so do some homework. We had a septic tank collapse on us. We didn't really notice it, except when all the kids came home to visit we had a slight back-up through the basement floor drain in storage room. Went outside to find a soggy mess on top of the tank location and a slight indent. The septic guys came the same day to tear out the old tank and install the new. It was during the first gentle snow of the winter season....See Moregardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
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