Yes, the tank(s) need to be pumped every number of years. That’s just system maintenance, easier to maintain that redo a ‘failed’ system.

One factor in much is how heavily used the system is? A family of 6 will put a lot more pressure on a septic system than say a single person living alone. Then we can look at previous owners of the house.

Our neighbors had a failure early on, maybe 8 years into a new house. They had Mom & Dad with 4 daughters. Their system ended up bubbling over into the lawn. There are also the type to not do much maintenance, out of sight, out of mind.

Yes, the 1st order of business is to take a peek. The system is relatively simple, but needs the flow to the drainfield to work.

My knowledge of septic systems is shit.

Nobody has specifically mentioned this yet.....

In standard septic tanks around here, there's generally a plastic strainer (filter) that slides down a 4" pipe on the outlet side of the tank.

If your ground isn't completely saturated, this is the first thing I would look for. It is designed to catch solids during high tank conditions to prevent them from ending up in your drain field. They do need to be hosed out periodically to prevent them from clogging.

As has been said above YES the system does have to be maintained, usually pumped every 3 to 5 years. There are solids (non dis-solvable material) that accumulates in the bottom of the tank that reduces the volume and thereby the "resident time" that the material gets to dissolve.

One other thing that has not been discussed yet is that in the 70's in many parts of the country there were no specs on how to properly install a septic tank and believe it or not we have found, on several instances, nothing more than a couple of 55 gallon drums with holes punched in them buried in the ground...so who knows what's down there instead of the 1000 gallon concrete tank that we now use for standard 3 bedroom drain fields...

My septic guy told me instead of using yeast or any of those products like Rid-x, etc - put that money in a jar and just get the septic pumped every 2-3 years.

We had to have field lines repaired / replace several years ago due to 40+ years of roots damaging the original lines.

Doesn't pumping the tank defeat the purpose of having the tank to begin with? You want that big puddle of bacteria stew growing in there.

My tank was put in in 2007 I believe and has not been pumped yet. Doing fine (knock on wood).

Granted, I don't have a house full of teenaged girls flushing pads and tampons down there, I collect my grease in a can next to the stove, don't use bleach, and generally don't put anything down there that won't readily decompose.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
Doesn't pumping the tank defeat the purpose of having the tank to begin with? You want that big puddle of bacteria stew growing in there.

In an ideal world: Yes. Had a close friend whose father put in both septic and a gray-water systems. Treated the septic properly. Finally had somebody out to look at the tank some twenty years later. Didn't need pumping. In real life most septic systems will get more water than is healthy for them and/or chemicals that degrade their function and/or non-biodegradable material. Thus occasional pumping is necessary.

Or wait until the tank fills up with solids, they overflow into the leach lines, thus saturating them, then have the tank pumped and the entire leech field replaced.

Checkout the EPA's Septic System for factual information. Some of what has been presented here is flat out false including not cleaning it out.

They used to use some kind of crummy tarpaper pipe (Orangeberg?) for sewer lines. Later, PVC pipe came into use. The tarpaper deteriorated over time, and the early PVC pipe sometimes wasn’t heavy walled enough to resist collapse from the weight of the dirt put over it, particularly if vehicles or tractors were driven over it. I have had the misfortune of owning two places where this has occurred, one with each type of line material. The backups only happened to us when we had guests visiting, whose big city bathroom usage overloaded the partially collapsed lines. Guests take it pretty hard when shitwater backs up into the bathtub. Some of them never come back.

i agree with ensigmatic's comment. If not overused one can probably never need a tank pumped. I had close to 15 years on a system. Had to have it pumped when I sold it. The guy that pumped it (I was there) said, nope it did not need pumped. Not even close.

By the same token. If you are washing four loads of laundry a day and have six people taking long showers and using ton's of household water. A garbage disposal etc you can kill one in no time.

People can be clueless.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
If you are washing four loads of laundry a day and have six people taking long showers and using ton's of household water.

Washing machines are killers.
(family's been in the business since 1946... and I don't mean the washing machine business.)

When my brother bought his house years ago, the sellers had to have the septic system redone. The reason? Flushed disposable diapers

may of missed this, after the tank there is the distribution box. If this box becomes un-level, putting more or all of the water load on say half the lines can overload those lines and back up. I hope the field is ok as this would be an expensive repair. Here in my local, we cannot re-do a field, and have to go to what they call "pump and run". This is an expensive install of a new large holding tank with level alarms. You then get to pay monthly sewage charges to the county.

quote:

Originally posted by hvactech:
may of missed this, after the tank there is the distribution box. If this box becomes un-level, putting more or all of the water load on say half the lines can overload those lines and back up. I hope the field is ok as this would be an expensive repair. Here in my local, we cannot re-do a field, and have to go to what they call "pump and run". This is an expensive install of a new large holding tank with level alarms. You then get to pay monthly sewage charges to the county.

He mentioned something about that. I am really freaking out because I don’t have $20k laying around. I got divorced about five years ago have managed to stay afloat and pay off about half the debt that I inherited.

Your leach field is either plugged or saturated assuming the lines are ok. Is the inlet and outlet in the tank ok? If the field is the problem you can have a new field installed much cheaper then digging up the old field. The old field will be ok after a couple years. Worms will clean it out. They can install a valve which will let you switch from the new field to the old field every couple years.
This is what I have been using for some time now with no problems. Good luck.

This sounds exactly like an issue that my daughter experienced at her house. The backup and overflow in the basement was the same. We finally got a plumber out with a camera and he found that it was after the tank. Had to feed the camera in at the tank to the piping to the leach bed. Found that tree roots had broken the terra cotta pipes and was blocking the flow to the leach bed. It had taken quite a while to back up that far, but he was able to pump the tank to buy time until the weather improves. She needs to dig up the terra cotta and replace the pipe with perforated PVC. He charged her just under $800 to diagnose and pump the tank.

A lot depends on what your local laws and restrictions are. We had a complete new field installed to an existing tank for $1700 two years ago. I'll bet that is as cheap as it can possibly be done. We aren't very restricted here. They used the half rounds rather than perforated pipe. I would think that would be really clog resistant.