Rural Hygiene
We are now septically clean. Two nice young men in a large new white tank truck came yesterday and did the deed. They dug down to the tank by hand, two men, two shovels, and made me feel quite foolish. While the tank is something like 5' x 10 feet, the lid is only about 18" on a side; I might have been able to dig that out by myself after all. It was such an easy dig--14" through loose soil--that he didn't charge me for digging it up. And even better, he did tell some colorful occupational stories, as you might imagine. I'll spare you the less savory (or should I say less aromatic) of them. You're welcome.
Two tales come to mind with regard to digging up tanks. I'm not the only one who mistakenly thought the whole tank had to be uncovered. In fact, he said, they arrived at one job where the entire 5' x 10' tank had not only been laboriously unearthed, the woman of the house (oooh I think I know this woman) had swept the top spotless clean with a broom!
Another tank they were to clean belonged to a 70-something gentleman back in the hills somewhere nearby. When they arrived, the driver noticed piles of dirt heaped everywhere. The man carried them around back to the septic tank. It was seven feet below soil line, a gaping cavern, and the man had dug it out by hand himself, filling and emptying five gallon buckets til the job was done. I couldn't imagine.
And then, there were septic horror stories of various flavors. Sorry, poor choice of terms. He told about one septic tank installer who regularly put them in backwards. There is a inlet and outlet side to the concrete bunker, the inlet being a couple of inches higher than the outlet to allow the tank to fill unimpeded by rising fluid levels. Makes sense. But apparently, this installer person often reverses them. You can imagine that, after a few years, these hapless homeowners are not going to be happy campers.
So, the deed is done. And as it turns out, just in time. We were at full pond. And now we're good for another five or six years of happy flushing, feeding untold billions of contented bacteria who live underground in the dark, immersed in a veritable feast. Sounds like win-win to me.
Comments
Ah, yes, a septic tank. Note to self: find out where septic tank actually is.
Posted by: Sean Pecor | March 17, 2006 6:24 AM
Thankfully, we are now on a "city" system, but I, too, remember septic tank horror. The last time we bought and lived in a rural home, the previous owner was kind enough to give us a map of the system, all calculated with distances and angles from the edge of the bathroom windown. Fine and dandy. It wasn't until five years later, when the tank had to be cleaned and we used that map to locate the trap hole, that we figured out the window had been moved three feet east when the house was remodeled.
Posted by: Gin | March 17, 2006 9:56 AM
When you find yours, Sean, come on over and find mine.
Posted by: Dave | March 18, 2006 11:44 AM