Feces!

[footfootfoot]

Ours is technically a cesspit. There is no leach field. It's a hole in the ground, lined with dry stacked stone, that fills up with about 1200 gallons of waste. A large part of the liquid slowly seeps into the soil while micro organisms break down the poo. Eventually, it gets full and needs to be pumped out. It used to be on a 3 year pump out cycle now it is yearly. The ability of the liquid to seep has been compromised by the years of caked on poo effectively plastering the stone and clogging the sand. That's my understanding.

A new septic system would run me about $10,000. A yearly pump out is currently $280. I don't see the benefit to installing a new system. I just need to be a bit more proactive come pump out time.

The sinking feeling today is the possibility that the clay drain tile (pipe) leading from the cast iron to pit may have collapsed, and if that is so, then all bets are off. I may tell the bank they can have the house.


There is a hour's worth of cleanup from today's part of the project and I still am not sure if things are running. I pulled a lot of flushable wipes out of the drain. They are not flushable, in case you wanted to know.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

I pulled a lot of flushable wipes out of the drain. They are not flushable, in case you wanted to know.

Well, technically, you can flush them. Just like you can flush little green plastic army men.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by glatt

Well, technically, you can flush them. Just like you can flush little green plastic army men.

Good point.

Originally Posted by http://www.theplumber.com/fhb.html

Choosing a Toilet

Steve Culpepper
Reproduced with permission from
Fine Homebuilding magazine.Oct./Nov. 1997

A head-to-head comparison for our readers with nothing to go on.

At first the toilets in our house were merely sluggish. Then they got slower and slower until they didn't flush at all. But the toilets weren't clogged. Something was in the sewer line. So I rented a sewer snake, unscrewed the clean-out and fed the hungry snake down the chute. In it went 10 ft., 25 ft., 40 ft. Still, the pipe didn't drain. As I pondered the problem, my young son stuck his head out the window, his little fists full of his favorite action figures, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. "Turtles live in the sewer, Daddy," he said.

After the snake failed to hit pay dirt, I retracted it and fed a garden hose down the sewer line. When the hose could go no farther, I turned up the pressure and just let the water eat. The hose had stewed in the sewer no more than five minutes when a dozen or so plastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all horribly chewed by the sewer snake, burbled to the surface. I coiled up the hose and broke the news to my son.

Gone are the days when we could flush toys...