I dug up our septic tank today. Ask me anything.

[triguy46]

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

1. OK...........

How long did it take?
Why did you do that?
Did you replace it with an outhouse?
Are these enough questions?
:)

[triguy46]

4. Only about 20 minutes....

just dug down to the top to open it up to be pumped out. It still works, plus the other side of the house has another one, an aerobic one that is much better, easier to maintain. I'm the septic expert in our household so feel qualified to tell all about this special activity. The fun starts when the truck shows up and we open the little door on the top!

[hippywife]

2. Went through that a couple years ago.

Well, the husband did anyway, and we had a honeydipper out. Yuch! :puke:

I feel for you. :hug:

[triguy46]

5. Not that bad really if you don't stick your head near the opening.

[hippywife]

7. Or stand down wind from it.

And I know you know how windy it always is in OK. LOL

[Spacemom]

3. What kind of septic?

Aerobic, or do you have a drain field?

[triguy46]

6. Drain field. We have an aerobic handling the other half of the house...

and it works so very very well. I highly recommend aerobic.

[NNadir]

8. I've done this lots of times. I actually spend a lot of time thinking about the design

of these systems.

I've had this exotic kind of idea about them, but I think prototypes would be expensive.

If I could afford it, I'd definitely install a ozonolysis purified constructed wet land. It always bugs me how the phosphorous in these systems is either lost or made into a big problem for the environment.

[triguy46]

9. Is this an issue with aerobic systems too?

[NNadir]

11. Yes. Your aerobic system has a drain field. Phosphorous and some of the nitrogen is carried

into this drainfield.

Generally most drainfields are located away from trees to avoid clogging.

However, trees are the only organisms with deep enough root systems to recover this phosphorous before it leaches into ground water and sometimes - and this is the big problem - surface bodies of water at lower elevations.

Aesthetically people may have a problem with the idea, but a better idea would be a constructed wet land, in which the water is sterilized in some way - ozone or radiolysis, although these involve an energy penalty - and allowed to leach into a shallow surface pit or irrigation system.

This would eliminate the need for commercial fertilizers - with their inevitable environmental implications - while purifying the water as plant roots absorb the nitrogen and phosphorous as nutrients.

[MajorChode]

12. A building I worked at years ago just had a turd pond

It had some sort of rubber liner and an aerator in the middle. It worked fine for many years until they hooked us up to the city sewer system. I can't remember if it froze over in the winter. I'm sure it must have.

[NNadir]

13. There is a difference between the system I'm talking about and an open sewer.

I'm not thinking of a "turd pond" per se.

Actually the external cost of these things is the subject of considerable analysis in the scientific literature.

I made reference to this elsewhere in a slightly sardonic piece elsewhere: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/22/18510/1895/710/439653">Constructed Wetlands in Norway: Greenhouse Gas Implications.

Note that the greenhouse gas N₂O is an inevitable consequence of industrial nitrogen fixation, and I have to believe that the flux from constructed wetlands is actually lower than it is with other alternatives.

Over the long term, drain fields are going to develop a nitrate problem in groundwater, and in fact, this is observed in some places.

[midnight armadillo]

14. What about eliminating the phosphorous?

If you switch all of your soaps etc to non-phosphorous formulations (pretty easy to do), how much is left, and is that a low enough amount that the cattails in a wetlands can handle it? In my yard I could probably get away with some graywater irrigation but a constructed wetlands would take up too much space.

[NNadir]

17. Phosphorous is an essential nutrient and is commonly found in...

...fecal matter (and fertilizers).

The problem with it involves that it stimulates too much growth, leading to explosions of algae in water ways. This problem is called eutrophication.

It is also associated with lawn and agricultural fertilizer run-off.

[struggle4progress]

10. Mmmm. I remember pumping those out years ago on a ranch. We'd pump the sludge into an irrigation

ditch, water a few alfalfa fields, and then stay out of the fields until they were dry again. One day, we set up, turned on the pumps, and started squirting gunk into the full-running ditch that was watering a field a mile or so down stream. And out of the distance, down the lonely highway, there came a biker gang; they took a backroad off the highway and pulled up alongside the irrigation ditch some distance from us. One of the guys with me said Oh, no! They're gonna drink from the ditch! and he took off running and yelling -- but he said when he got there, the last of them had finished drinking, so he just asked how they were and if they were lost and if they needed directions, because there wasn't anything more he could do at that point, and there wasn't much point in pissing them off

[Kali]

15. OMG

:wow: :rofl:

[struggle4progress]

16. Thirty five years later it's funny. But I bet there was a bunch of real sick bikers that week.

Don't just assume country ditch water is drinkable :)

[Kali]

20. eh - uness there was some particular disease organism present combined with

weak immune systems, they were probably fine.

Still I sure as hell wouldn't have told them either!

[struggle4progress]

21. Maybe. But enteric pathogens are ubiquitous, and I expect many people

are briefly ill after exposure to non-virulent fauna foreign to their own intestinal ecology. Your immune system's conquered what's in your gut; mine's conquered what's in my gut; but mine's not necessarily completely prepared for what you've got and vice versa. A nice serving of my sewage in your beverage probably won't kill you -- but your system may decide after a few hours Whoa! Something ain't right here! and purge itself

[MilesColtrane]

18. Was the "Shawshank Redemption" theme playing in your head the whole time you were doing it?

[Deep13]

19. Did you use Winston Rothchild's Sewage and Septic Sucking Service?

:shrug:

I believe it's a Canadian company from the Possum Lake area near Port Asbestos.

[ij7850]

22. Uuuughh

[ashling]

23. Did it turn out to be

Cheney's undisclosed hidey hole?
:shrug:

[yellowcanine]

24. Was this in New Jersey and if so any sign of Jimmy Hoffa?