Shitty Day (Day 703)

I have a slightly funny story for you all. I've been paving and landscaping as you know (geology seems sort of mundane when you're doing such work), but yesterday morning everything turned to shit--literally. Nancy used the toilet and when I went in, it wasn't quite right. So I added to the pile (pun intended) and flushed away. Not much happened. Crap, I'd unloaded my closet snake at our garage sale before we left Denver. So off to the rental store, came back and snaked away to no avail. The toilet drained down in 15 minutes so it wasn't a complete blockage. Went outside and snaked the Kelly fitting (a clean-out fitting to go in or out on the line). No relief.

OK, go further downstream. Took off the primary septic tank cover and oops. Full of the BROWN to the brim. That's no good. Took the 3rd tank's cover off, the supposedly gray water pump tank and it was full. Not good. Looked like nothing was flowing, or in our case was being pumped to the septic drain field.

I know that this is not very interesting to you all, but maybe you'll have a septic system someday. Called my septic guy, no answer on the cell or home. (Turns out he took a job teaching at the local high school because business has been so slow for the last year). I called our septic designer (Suzanne Martin), and no reply. Called her office at (Miller Bay Water, Poulsbo), reached her dad and got a new phone no. Called, left a message and then a return call in about 1/2 hr.

She came over in a jiffy, said she probably knew what the problem was, and DID. When we had the septic inspection last winter, she said to be sure and turn the power on (and pointed to the control box at the rear of the house) when we got ready to use the system (i.e. move in). I logged that in my spongy brain. We moved in May 15th and turned the power on downstairs, along with many other circuit breakers.

So, it seems like we've been showering, laundering and crapping away in bliss for 4 months. This filled the 3 tanks to the brim (some drainage occurred out of the system by gravity) but yesterday the level got high enough that there was no where for new stuff to go.

Suzanne flipped on the power at the outside controller box and about 30 seconds later the pump put 45 gallons of gray water out into the drain field. It will continue to do this every 3 hrs until everything gets back to normal levels, in about 3 days. Then it reverts to normal mode and doses the field (technical jargon for pumping) with 45 gallons every 4 hours for a total of 270 gal per day. The daily total is dictated by the number of bedrooms in the house x 120 gals usage/bedroom per day. So our max. pumpage per day is 360 gals, nominally 270. However, since we only have a two bedroom house and a single couple living in it, our normal inside house water usage is probably about 100 gals a day. So once we get past this backup crisis, we should be back to normal, with 2-3 pump cycles per day. Now you know more than you need too about pressure-type septic systems.