septic tank enzymes

Some of the issue with trying to diagnose septic problems is from the many different ways they have been built over the decades, and the different codes regulating them.

New ones in my state are 2/3's mound systems, with an internal pump to deliver the fluids to the leach field hill. Those better be looked at every few years, if something goes wrong it's bigger bucks replacing it.

Many old sites from 30+ years ago have a septic, with tile going away from it to field tile which goes to a creek or ditch...... These will likely 'work' forever, as when the septic tank gets full of sediment, things just keep flowing down the tile..... When built, they actually worked as a septic should, but after a few decades - who knows how full the tank is? Out of sight, out of mind.

Some leach fields need to be a foot or so deep by code. Others were put in 6 feet deep. Some are in clay that doesn't drain well, some are in gravel soils where you can't stop them up if you leave the well run 24/7.

Those of you with a big old tank, and a careful lifestyle that doesn't put a whole lot down the drains can go a long, long time before the tank fills up with sediments.

Someday, it will fill up if it is never pumped out. For some people, that is every 2 years. For others, it could be half a century.

There are so many unknowns.

The enzymes are needed - but, they should already be in a working septic system. If you have a good healthy setup that never causes problems - using the additives wouldn't likely have ever helped - your system is just a good one, and you are using it carefully.

--->Paul

Absolutely true. But, tank additives are a must for those of us whose crap does not stink.

I am involved in the state regulatory program for septic systems in Minnesota. I have heard time and time again from proud homeowners that they’ve never had to pump their tanks (fill in the blank) years and its working fine. That’s great, IF you periodically measure the sludge and grease levels in your septic tank and know what your measurements mean. But if you never take these measurements, sooner or later, the tank WILL fill up….trust me on this one. Not only will your tank fill up, but so will your drainfield. When your drainfield is full of grease and sludge it’s all over….this stuff doesn’t soak into soil….it seals the soil.

So what does it cost to have a tank pumped? 100 bucks, 150 bucks? Average that cost over three to five years. Darn cheap insurance compared to having to install a new system because the old system is full of sludge. That annualized pumping cost is cheaper than buying Rid-X and using it at the manufacturers recommended rate and frequency.

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Thanks for everyones input. I have learned alot about this. And it cost us $250 last year to have the 1,000 gallon tank pumped.

Here's a thought. I've known quite a few folks that had to extend their field lines. It sounds like your septic system was poorly installed. You might want to see if there is a warranty on it.

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Thats pricey! We just had our two-tank system pumped (1,000 gal and a
650 gal) for $135. here in MN.

jb

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Ann, double check with Cabin Fever on this, but I believe he will back me up..figuratively, not literally! LOL...

A septic tank WILL fill up eventually. Our diet, the washing of vegetables in the sink, and many other items that do down the drain are not biodegradeable. Sand is silicon...it stays in the tank! So everytime we prepare a meal, use the toilet, or bath/shower, we are literally filling our septic tanks with elements that will NOT degrade.

But, assuming your tank is a conventional 'old fashioned' system, adding yeast, sour/buttermilk, etc will not improve its efficiency. RidX is a crock! And some things that are poured down the drain, such as Root Killer, may give you temporary relief, but it may also kill your highly valued shade trees.

Resolve yourself to pumping your septic tank ever few years. Guests flush things that should NOT be flushed. Cigarette butts, Pampers, etc do not degrade! So unless you want to monitor each guest personally, you'll have to pump the tank.

With that said, I've had a tank in operation for 30 years, without having to be pumped. But then my wife knows not to wash soil from vegetables down the sink. And I carefully explain to guests that if I find one of their cigarette butts in my septic tank, then I will hunt them down and hur them. LOL... We had a couple of friends stay with us for some weeks about 30 years ago. I explained how a rural septic system worked. Two weeks after they left, we had a severe problem. When I excavated and removed the tank lid, I found a half dozen condoms floating on the sludge! The bacterial decomposition caused them to swell up like balloons, and plug up the outflow from the tank to the lateral line! (Yep, Larry got a phone call about the results of his activities with his wife!)

The ONLY thing I use in my successful septic system is Basic H (a Shakley product). Basic H is used in all our liquid fertilizer and cattle feed. It is totally non toxic. It is best described as a 'surfactant'. Basic H reduces the surface tension of any liquid it is added to. At about $35 a gallon, it seems expensive. But I only use about one cup in a toilet once a year. It reduces surface tension to the point that water can flow through sludge, grease, or an overloaded lateral line. In effect, it allows water to flow through much, much smaller apertures in the soil.

As an illustration, you can take one drop of tap water and drop it upon the surface of a brown paper bag. The water will stand upon the paper in a half sphere, perhaps for minutes. But, if you add one drop of Basic H to one gallon of water, then take one drop of water from that gallon and drop it upon the paper bag, you will see the drop instantly be absorbed by the fibers of the paper. There will be NO 'standing' of water.

Basic H can be used in a water puddle in a driveway. Pouring a small amount in a persistent puddle will lower the surface tension of the water to the point where it can flow into the soil. The result is that the puddle disappears in moments.

Basic H is nontoxic, and is relatively cheap if you use it as directed. BTW, 30 years ago I had a 'poor boy' septic system consisting of a 55 gallon drum and 30 feet of lateral line. Use of Basic H kept that system fully functional for 30 years...without pumping!

Yes, it was pricey but I live 25 miles out of town and they are the only company that would come out here. It would be nice to extend the lines but no room to. The system has been in about 8-10 years now and was in before we moved in so no warranty. Am suprised that the county approved the permit. During the summer we haven't had trouble with the water backing up unti now so that's why I am hoping it is something in the pipe rather than the drainfield problem.

Okay, I give up. Go ahead and add all the septic tank additives, enzymes and potions you want to. And go ahead, and don’t have your tank pumped on a routine basis. But, please, please promise to do one thing….okay? Once a year, measure the sludge depth and scum (grease) thickness in your tank as shown in the diagram below. All you need are two simple, home-made measuring devices. One is just a long pole with a clean, white rag wrapped around the bottom 3 feet of the pole. The other is a pole with a 5” x 5” piece of plywood attached to the end. Use these poles to make the measurements shown in the diagram below.

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While I agree with what you say, her problem is water backing up. She did get the tank pumped not terribly long ago.

Seems like something is wrong. An inspection would be the best, with someone who knows septic systems, to see what is causing the problem. It is possible there is a garbage disposal, or a lot of non-digestable stuff going into the septic, and it is indeed full already again. But, from what we are being told, there seems to be some other issue, a blockage or a bad design/ bad soil/ bad drainage.

Would be nice to figure out the root cause of the problem. Could be as simple as an unusually high rainfall that won't bother again in 25 years......

--->Paul

Our system has a tank alarm. I admit I know little about septic systems as we only moved out here in December, but I'm learning alot during this discussion. So how does a tank alarm work? It was installed before we bought the house and the tank was supposedly pumped a few months before we bought the house.

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People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately. - Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900

The tank alarm is in your pumping tank or possibly in the second chamber of your septic tank. It's purpose is to let you know that, for some reason, the pump is not pumping effluent to your drainfield or mound. If you don't get the pump fixed in a hurry, you could have wastewater backed up into your yard or home. If the alarm goes off, STOP USING WATER! until the pump is fixed.

The alarm has nothing to do with alerting you as to when to have the sludge and grease pumped out of the septic tank.

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So my septic system has a pump? That uses electricity? And wouldn't work if the proverbial SHTF? OH ^$#!! Good greif, another thing to worry about. I need to get someone out here to walk us through all of this septic/well crap! (litterally and figuratively!) It seems the harder we try to less self-sufficeint we become. Getting a wood stove this year has fallen through, going solar on the well is turning out to be too expensive and now I have to worry about a septic pump?! I guess we better hope that the SHTF doesn't happen soon, huh?

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People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately. - Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900

CF all those negative comments and using your accumulated knowledge and experience to help someone decipher a problem just goes to show you are trying to be a know-it-all and flaunting your superior knowledge of septic systems....LOL

Great advice! but I imagine there will still be a run on ridX at the hardware store....

Just call me SewerMan to the rescue!

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Ok """""I'm wading in slowly"""""""Trying not to slip"""""""
I'm glad that you find poop so interesting! Adding something, anything, to your septic system from the toilet is , well, adding something to your septic system. I had a problem with mine for a few years where it would back up and get the ground above the tank wet. Called a guy about it and he went to the town for a permit to dig up my system, without even coming to look at it. All I asked him to do was check it out and tell me what he thought the problem was, and give me an estimate. He was a distributer of a new
triangular plastic leach field pipe that is gonna revolutionize the sheet hole business and I was the lucky guy that was gonna fund it. Whoa did I get excited. I can't tell you............I won't tell you. I dug up a few distribution lids to the leach field and they were fine. Another guy said the pipe leaving the tank was probably broken or crushed and then he dug it up with his backhoe and he was right. So he took out the cast iron pipe and replaced it with pvc and sealed it with portland mix and buried it up again and charged me 140. It worked well for two months but then started to back up in our house so he tried snaking it from the house, and that only worked a bit so he put a bladder into the pipe and turned on the hose and it totally flushed out the pipe from the house to the tank. It has worked perfect since. We always get our tank pumped every two to three years. The tank is fine and so is the leach field. I think the exit pipe collapsed and that contributed to the pipe from the house to the tank getting clogged. Total bill was $180. Most people would probably end up paying for a new leach field or tank. We have a heavy clay soil so it could be a potential problem. As far as leaving it alone for say twenty years or so. I would hazard a guess that some people don't ever get check-ups at the doctors too and then you always hear the next of kin saying "he never went to the doctor cause he was healthy as a horse....till he died suddenly. It might be cheaper in the long run to maintain your system with pumping than to let the problem get worse and then pay the monster bill after ten or twenty years.
Rambler and cabin fever; Just wanna say thanks for the info even though mine is working great now. You are getting thru to many people out here with good info.
I relate my story just in case someone has the same problem I did. I'm no expert but regular maintenance is the key. We also found baby wipes in the pipe between the house and tank. Can you explain what that 5"x5" piece of plywood is for?

A few years ago, our leach field was not draining properly. We priced having it fixed ; so we went searching at the local hardware store. What we found was Bio Sure Restore. We thought it was somewhat expensive for a quart container, but it was a heck of a lot cheaper than replacing the leach lines so we got some. It didn't take more than a few days before we noticed a great improvement in the amount of time it took for the tub to drain and it no longer gurgled in the drains when we flushed the toilet. I recommend you give it a try if you think your leach lines are plugging up.

http://www.bio-sure.com/

my tank has been functioning perectly for about....45 yrs.
I pump it out about once every 5 yrs...

there is a very light layer of scum..

I do not flush toilet paper..it just makes the whole tank like pudding. No paper, and my washer drains into the tank.. acutally 2 washers. i use chlorine in tiny doses, a few teaspoons in the wash. when I rarely have it pumped i watch... its mostly all fluid and a lttle sludge on the bottom.
its a healthy tank.

because I do flush a lot fo soap, about once ayr i dump a gal of soap digester in the drains, to eat the crud out of the pipes and traps, but soap digester is suppose to be good for the tank too... I dunno.. maybe so. it cleans the drains that all I care about.
since I do use chorine and soap, and no paper, and a gal of soap digester every yr for the drains, one/none/or a combination of all is doing the tank good.

or not... maybe i'm lucky. i tend to think its the lack of paper. we once flushed paper like everyone else and it clogged the lines and turned the tank into 500 gal of pudding.
so we stopped, yrs ago and its never gave us any problem since.
when I get the urge to go add some bactrial voo doo, I open the tank and look inside at the brown waterand the light foam clumps flaoting... and the not so bad smell... and I change my mind.

maybe its the soap digester voodoo... who knows. it does clean the traps out like an acid bath.

Could you give a brand name, or source, or ??? for that soap digester? Or just liquid plumber stuff?

--->Paul

The plywood square is nailed or screwed to the bottom of a pole (the dimensions of the plywood is not important, it could be 4x4 or 4x6, etc). You sink this pole into the tank after removing the outlet end tank cover. Slowly pull the pole up until the plywood touches the bottom of the outlet baffle. When they make contact, draw a mark on the pole at ground level. Then slowly pull the pole upward until the plywood contacts the bottom of the scum (grease) level. Make another mark on the pole at ground level. If the distance between the marks on the pole is 3 inches or less, have the tank pumped. The measurement means that there is only 3 or less inches left in the tank before scum and grease will start exiting the outlet pipe to your drainfield (which will clog the soil in the drainfield).

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