Septic System Component Overview Video
Video Transcript
Hey, how are you today? I am going to go over septic systems In today's example, we’re going to go over the most common type of system that we see in residential real estate in this area. It's all governed by Title
V law, and you haven't already seen it, I do have a video on Title V where I sort of breakdown the report and talk about the kinds of things that we're looking for, in the report when we go through, the kind of types of things that you should probably be thinking about..
If you want to know how a septic system works really, I don't have a good way to show you when I'm at the properties. I did this quick little video so that you can sort of see what's going on. And again, this is the most common setup. It's a good setup. It's a good overview, but there are lots of differences between the various setups and there's a lot in the more modern systems, anything in the last 20 years, generally has significantly sophisticated engineered components that are worth talking about.
If you're already in a house and you just want to learn a little bit about septic systems, have a conversation with the guy that's pumping your tank. And if you say, well, “I don't have anyone pump my tank”, go find someone and get your tank pumped. It's been too long. Okay, even modern day systems are not designed to run indefinitely without pumping there. We'll go over a little bit why, but generally, there's three components to a system, a tank, a D box and a leach field. The size of those components depends on the size of the system and it's generally rated by bedroom. Soa two-bedroom system is going to have a smaller tank, smaller D box, and smaller leach field. A five-bedroom system is going to have a big tank, a big bigger d-box in a much bigger leach field. The reason is because for every bedroom that a, and they're rated and bedrooms for some reason, But, I mean make sense because they're trying to take a guess at how many people are living in the house to figure out how much water you're going to use.
But they're rated by bedrooms and basically a bedroom equates to 110 gallons of water a day per bedroom. So a four-bedroom system is 440 gallons of water per day. That is a ton of water. I know that sometimes I get questions, they say, what if I use a lot of water! If you're using 440 gallons of water a day, you are using too much! You're being very wasteful. Come on. Let's have some respect for the environment here. The systems are really not designed for that. You know, you shouldn't be doing that. Okay, but most people, you know, my family, a family of five, very typical family, but I think we use 140 gallons a day on average, you know, that's all laundry, all showering. You know, it's just really, really hard to get into, you know, 400 a day. And so, and you really shouldn't be. So again, these systems tend to be over engineered for daily household use, which is good, make means that they're less likely to fail, but they do get really big as the number of bedrooms goes on. But generally everything goes into the tank. The tank is primarily for solid waste collection. What they're trying to do is separate everything that's in there so that it doesn't get into the leach field. You don't want solids in the leach field, which we'll get to in a minute. But basically what you're hoping is that nothing but liquids gets into that d-box. Okay? And liquids, ultimately that can be broken down, obviously water doesn't need to be broken down and go right back in and system but there's lots of other stuff that the solid waste in here, which is designed through the helpful, use of bacteria to break down into a liquid, which ultimately then goes into the D- box as effluent and then out to leach field.
Okay, once it gets into the leach field, again bacteria does its work returns, everything, 100% of everything, back to Mother Nature. It's good for your lawn too. I mean, you can't beat it. So, if you're not sure where your tank is, I'll tell you the end of February or early, March is a great place to figure it out. All you've got to do is look to where's and see where the snow melts first! Okay, your tank, because of the bacteria in there, that's breaking down those solids is generating enough heat where it's going to melt the snow on top of the septic tank. And so, you know, I get a nice clear outline. My tank must not be very far below the surface, but I get a very clear outline every time the snow starts melting, on exactly where it is. I don't really have to guess I know exactly where it is. So your leech filled with not produce that kind of heat D box, doesn't produce that kind of heat. Those are harder components to find, But they are in your title 5 and it should be noted that even though the tank is relatively easy to find, because it's close to the house, the D-box, and the leach field can be really far away, and some of these systems have pump up chambers because gravity for whatever reason, the lot isn’t helping you with gravity. And so, you know, you can move this stuff wherever, and sometimes they do that in order to find a place where the drainage is good enough where they can put a system in, but most of these systems are gravity based, 90 to 95%, I would say use nothing but gravity and mother nature. This is a brief overview. I hope you found it helpful and, but go over the title 5 thing if you're in the market for buying a house, and we probably are because that's why you're on my site. But if you did just come here to learn a little bit more about your system, and you like the video, let me know!
