July 19, 2010--Midcoast: Septic 101
We were returning home from a day of chores and as we pulled into the driveway Rona said, "Do you hear that?"
I of course said no. My hearing is by now so deteriorated that unless there's an explosion or the TV is turned up to full volume I am often reduced to saying, "Huh? What?"
"I hear what sounds like a smoke alarm. I think from the shed. But,” she noted, “we don't have a smoke alarm there."
"Though we do have," I said, still not hearing anything, "the new septic tank alarm rigged up in there."
"The what alarm?"
"The one for the septic tank. You know, before we bought this place they installed a new septic tank, the old one was failing, and the codes require that these systems have alarms."
"To alert you to what?" Rona was getting out of the car quickly and heading toward the shed. I was trailing well behind.
"I'm afraid to the fact that the tank is almost full and needs to be pumped out."
"Full?" Rona wheeled toward me, "It's not supposed to need pumping for at least a year. Isn't that what the contractor told you?"
Her mentioning you, meaning me, and her accusatory tone will give you a glimpse of our recent septic tank conversations.
About all matters having to do with the project I, not Rona, had been the one to deal with the previous owners and the contractor. I, not Rona, had been the repository of all information about progress. I, not Rona, had participated in the decision-making along the way to alter the original plan (to replace the entire system) and just add a new containment tank, agreeing with the septic installer that two tanks were better than one. And, most germane to the other day, I, not Rona, had heard his promise that the tanks, plural, would not need to be pumped monthly as they had been last year when we were just renters and had just the one tank.
Rona did not need to say another word to reveal her exasperation as she resumed striding toward the shed and pulling at the lock and latch to get the doors open as quickly as possible. And, hearing challenged as I am, the doors did not need to swing more than half open for even me to hear the portentous wail of the alarm.
"How much does it cost to pump them out?" Rona said, shifting the subject from my responsibility for the problem to the presumably exorbitant cost of its solution.
"I don't know," I muttered, "I don't think that much. But how do we know we'll need to do that? The contractor told me . . ."
"Told you, not me. And since you have a habit of hearing what you want to hear, I'm expecting it will need to be pumped. And every month. We've only been here that long and it's already filled."
"They," I corrected her. "We have two tanks and . . ."
"And, nothing. How do we even know if they put in a second tank? Did we verify that when we did the walk-through before the closing?" We hadn't. Not in truth knowing, assuming we had remembered to do so, what to look for.
"Maybe it's a false alarm," I said hopefully but not expected it would turn out to be.
"Maybe, nothing. I'm sure they're full. The two of them. Do you know how the alarm works?" I had to admit that I didn't. "It cost all this money for a new system and a fancy alarm and . . ."
"Remember, they paid for it. The owners. It was part of the negotiations and . . . “
“That much is true, but as we discussed, it affected the purchase price. We wound up paying for it indirectly by, I’m sure, having to agree to a higher price.”
At the time we had in fact discussed all of this. Actually, we had argued about it. It was the one thing we disagreed about after otherwise falling in love with the cottage and the area and the people we had been meeting.
Bringing us back to the present, Rona said, “But, again, do you know how the alarm works? What to do when it goes off? As it now is. What a hideous sound it makes. Our neighbors are already probably calling 911 to complain.”
“The code requires the alarm," I said. "That much at I know."
"And of course you didn't ask anyone involved in the installation to show you how it works." I had to admit that I hadn't. "So please go inside now and call the contractor and septic people to ask them what we're supposed to do."
Which I did. Or at least I left a message for them. By then Rona had followed me into the house and was already on the Internet looking up septic tank alarms. She read from one Website--"When the alarm goes off this means that the septic tank is at least 90 percent filled. Call your septic system contractor and have him come to pump the system immediately. While waiting for him, refrain from doing laundry . . ."
"We were not planning on doing the wash," I said sheepishly.
"Do not," Rona continued without missing a beat, "do not shower or bathe . . ."
"I wasn't planning to do that until later."
"And, above all, do not flush the toilet since a full septic system is prone to backing up and . . . Do I have to keep reading?" I shook my head. "So if you have to go, go in the woods." I nodded.
Within half an hour, Dave ____, of the eponymous C_____ Septic was on the scene with his truck. A Rube Goldberg contraption that filled the entire road. It included a huge tank for the drained waste and hundreds of feet of coiled hose, which I assumed was to connect the septic system to the truck's storage tank. While he calmly approached us, with Rona and I studiously not talking or facing each other, he left the truck’s engine idling and the pump running so that both in tandem throbbed so severely that I could see the doors of the shed trembling on their hinges.
“So what seems to be the trouble?”
“As you can hear,” I said, “the septic alarm went off and . . .”
“And, from what I read on the Internet, since he doesn’t know anything about either the tank or the alarm,” Rona meant me, “I suspect it’s at least 90 percent full and needs to be pumped out immediately or, as I read, it will back up and when we flush the toilet it will . . .”
Mr. C_____ chucked at that thought. “Yeah, I’ve heard it all and I’ve seen it all. That included. What you just said about flushing and backing up. But, but, hear me now,” he had picked up our agitation and that Rona and I, how shall I put it, we’re not communicating very well, at most it’s 90 percent full and you could do quite a few more flushes before you have a mess on your hands. You’ve got two pretty big tanks down there,” he tapped his foot on the two hatches just visible below the lawn’s surface, “and they can hold a lot more than you think. In fact, if it wasn’t for that big rain we had the other day this one here—which is a real septic tank—would be leeching out its contents pretty good. And you wouldn’t even be needing’ this other one here, which is a containment tank.”
We both looked at him in ways that must have indicated we didn’t understand what he was describing. “I don’t know the difference between these two different types of tanks,” Rona confessed. Standing well behind her I nodded. “You did say we have two types?” He nodded. “One a septic and one a containment type?”
“That’s right.”
“And . . . ?”
Thus encouraged, Mr. C_____ spent the next half hour offering a detailed explanation of how septic tanks work; how they both fill up and empty themselves into a leech field; how a containment tank works—in our case it is set up to handle overflows from the septic tank when we are using an inordinate amount of water or the leech field is saturated, as it has been, from heavy rain; and again in our case how the two tanks are connected.
“I now understand our system and how it works,” Rona said. “If only he had asked the contractor when the new tanks were installed we wouldn’t now be wasting your time.” She shot me a look.
“No trouble at all. Everyone needs a lesson about how these work. I call it Septic 101,” he grinned at Rona. “You are new to these parts, to owning a home here rather than renting, so you need to know how all your systems work because they all need some tending.” I was worried, from this that Rona, as frustrated as she was by the situation and me, would want to call the real estate broker and put the cottage up for sale.
But, she said, “I do want to learn. I love it here. I love this house. It’s just that I want to take good care of it.” I breathed a sigh of relief since I have the same feelings. “Now, what do you think needs to be done?”
“First thing I’ve got to get these hatches off and take a look. It’s my thought that you didn’t have a false alarm,” Rona glared at me again as if to say I told you so, “but rather that when they installed it they rigged the alarm up improperly. There’s no reason you should be having to pump out these babies so soon.”
“How often should we have to?” Rona again looked at me accusingly.
“’Bout once a year at the most.”
“Really” Rona said. Hearing confirmed what I had been told it was my turn to shoot her a look of I-told-you-so.
He had the lids off in just a few minutes and was peering down into the tanks themselves. “See here how there is this overflow pipe in the septic tank?” We had both moved closer and were looking over his shoulder—Rona into the septic tank, me into the containment tank. We were still estranged, as this would suggest. “You can see in this tank over here that the waste liquid is about half a foot below it, but then see how the alarm, this here thing which hangs down above the fluid, is about touching it. That’s what’s settin’ off the alarm. It should have been placed higher. If it had been there’d be no alarm, no need to be calling me out—though I do like getting to know you people—and more ‘en anything else you wouldn’t be fighting around with each other on such a beautiful day.” We were that obvious.
He stood up to take in the view across Johns Bay. “Mighty pretty back here. I can see why you wanted to spend more time here. I don’t get a chance to do much of that these days. Need to work two jobs. This one and driving a school bus, which I do because I like the kids and they provide health insurance. The town I mean. I couldn’t afford it myself just from emptying septic tanks. Had some cancer five years ago—doing very well, thanks—but would cost me a fortune now to have to pay for it myself. So if I were you kids,” I in fact must be at least 10 years older than he—“if I were you, I’d calm down, let me fix the alarm, which won’t take but another minute, and then get out of your way so you can get yourself something to drink and then go sit down there by the water. It’s shapin’ up to be quite a sunset.”
He stooped down to work on the alarm wire in the septic tank. Following his good advice, Rona and I were now standing side-by-side, both looking into the tank in which he was working.
“I’m just about through here,” he said turning to look at us. Though still bending into the tank he was smiling broadly. “But just one more thing, which could have many meanings.”
“We’re all ears,” Rona said, now also smiling.
“In this business shit happens fast.”
With that he roared with laughter and so did we. And it did turn out to be a magnificent sunset.
I of course said no. My hearing is by now so deteriorated that unless there's an explosion or the TV is turned up to full volume I am often reduced to saying, "Huh? What?"
"I hear what sounds like a smoke alarm. I think from the shed. But,” she noted, “we don't have a smoke alarm there."
"Though we do have," I said, still not hearing anything, "the new septic tank alarm rigged up in there."
"The what alarm?"
"The one for the septic tank. You know, before we bought this place they installed a new septic tank, the old one was failing, and the codes require that these systems have alarms."
"To alert you to what?" Rona was getting out of the car quickly and heading toward the shed. I was trailing well behind.
"I'm afraid to the fact that the tank is almost full and needs to be pumped out."
"Full?" Rona wheeled toward me, "It's not supposed to need pumping for at least a year. Isn't that what the contractor told you?"
Her mentioning you, meaning me, and her accusatory tone will give you a glimpse of our recent septic tank conversations.
About all matters having to do with the project I, not Rona, had been the one to deal with the previous owners and the contractor. I, not Rona, had been the repository of all information about progress. I, not Rona, had participated in the decision-making along the way to alter the original plan (to replace the entire system) and just add a new containment tank, agreeing with the septic installer that two tanks were better than one. And, most germane to the other day, I, not Rona, had heard his promise that the tanks, plural, would not need to be pumped monthly as they had been last year when we were just renters and had just the one tank.
Rona did not need to say another word to reveal her exasperation as she resumed striding toward the shed and pulling at the lock and latch to get the doors open as quickly as possible. And, hearing challenged as I am, the doors did not need to swing more than half open for even me to hear the portentous wail of the alarm.
"How much does it cost to pump them out?" Rona said, shifting the subject from my responsibility for the problem to the presumably exorbitant cost of its solution.
"I don't know," I muttered, "I don't think that much. But how do we know we'll need to do that? The contractor told me . . ."
"Told you, not me. And since you have a habit of hearing what you want to hear, I'm expecting it will need to be pumped. And every month. We've only been here that long and it's already filled."
"They," I corrected her. "We have two tanks and . . ."
"And, nothing. How do we even know if they put in a second tank? Did we verify that when we did the walk-through before the closing?" We hadn't. Not in truth knowing, assuming we had remembered to do so, what to look for.
"Maybe it's a false alarm," I said hopefully but not expected it would turn out to be.
"Maybe, nothing. I'm sure they're full. The two of them. Do you know how the alarm works?" I had to admit that I didn't. "It cost all this money for a new system and a fancy alarm and . . ."
"Remember, they paid for it. The owners. It was part of the negotiations and . . . “
“That much is true, but as we discussed, it affected the purchase price. We wound up paying for it indirectly by, I’m sure, having to agree to a higher price.”
At the time we had in fact discussed all of this. Actually, we had argued about it. It was the one thing we disagreed about after otherwise falling in love with the cottage and the area and the people we had been meeting.
Bringing us back to the present, Rona said, “But, again, do you know how the alarm works? What to do when it goes off? As it now is. What a hideous sound it makes. Our neighbors are already probably calling 911 to complain.”
“The code requires the alarm," I said. "That much at I know."
"And of course you didn't ask anyone involved in the installation to show you how it works." I had to admit that I hadn't. "So please go inside now and call the contractor and septic people to ask them what we're supposed to do."
Which I did. Or at least I left a message for them. By then Rona had followed me into the house and was already on the Internet looking up septic tank alarms. She read from one Website--"When the alarm goes off this means that the septic tank is at least 90 percent filled. Call your septic system contractor and have him come to pump the system immediately. While waiting for him, refrain from doing laundry . . ."
"We were not planning on doing the wash," I said sheepishly.
"Do not," Rona continued without missing a beat, "do not shower or bathe . . ."
"I wasn't planning to do that until later."
"And, above all, do not flush the toilet since a full septic system is prone to backing up and . . . Do I have to keep reading?" I shook my head. "So if you have to go, go in the woods." I nodded.
Within half an hour, Dave ____, of the eponymous C_____ Septic was on the scene with his truck. A Rube Goldberg contraption that filled the entire road. It included a huge tank for the drained waste and hundreds of feet of coiled hose, which I assumed was to connect the septic system to the truck's storage tank. While he calmly approached us, with Rona and I studiously not talking or facing each other, he left the truck’s engine idling and the pump running so that both in tandem throbbed so severely that I could see the doors of the shed trembling on their hinges.
“So what seems to be the trouble?”
“As you can hear,” I said, “the septic alarm went off and . . .”
“And, from what I read on the Internet, since he doesn’t know anything about either the tank or the alarm,” Rona meant me, “I suspect it’s at least 90 percent full and needs to be pumped out immediately or, as I read, it will back up and when we flush the toilet it will . . .”
Mr. C_____ chucked at that thought. “Yeah, I’ve heard it all and I’ve seen it all. That included. What you just said about flushing and backing up. But, but, hear me now,” he had picked up our agitation and that Rona and I, how shall I put it, we’re not communicating very well, at most it’s 90 percent full and you could do quite a few more flushes before you have a mess on your hands. You’ve got two pretty big tanks down there,” he tapped his foot on the two hatches just visible below the lawn’s surface, “and they can hold a lot more than you think. In fact, if it wasn’t for that big rain we had the other day this one here—which is a real septic tank—would be leeching out its contents pretty good. And you wouldn’t even be needing’ this other one here, which is a containment tank.”
We both looked at him in ways that must have indicated we didn’t understand what he was describing. “I don’t know the difference between these two different types of tanks,” Rona confessed. Standing well behind her I nodded. “You did say we have two types?” He nodded. “One a septic and one a containment type?”
“That’s right.”
“And . . . ?”
Thus encouraged, Mr. C_____ spent the next half hour offering a detailed explanation of how septic tanks work; how they both fill up and empty themselves into a leech field; how a containment tank works—in our case it is set up to handle overflows from the septic tank when we are using an inordinate amount of water or the leech field is saturated, as it has been, from heavy rain; and again in our case how the two tanks are connected.
“I now understand our system and how it works,” Rona said. “If only he had asked the contractor when the new tanks were installed we wouldn’t now be wasting your time.” She shot me a look.
“No trouble at all. Everyone needs a lesson about how these work. I call it Septic 101,” he grinned at Rona. “You are new to these parts, to owning a home here rather than renting, so you need to know how all your systems work because they all need some tending.” I was worried, from this that Rona, as frustrated as she was by the situation and me, would want to call the real estate broker and put the cottage up for sale.
But, she said, “I do want to learn. I love it here. I love this house. It’s just that I want to take good care of it.” I breathed a sigh of relief since I have the same feelings. “Now, what do you think needs to be done?”
“First thing I’ve got to get these hatches off and take a look. It’s my thought that you didn’t have a false alarm,” Rona glared at me again as if to say I told you so, “but rather that when they installed it they rigged the alarm up improperly. There’s no reason you should be having to pump out these babies so soon.”
“How often should we have to?” Rona again looked at me accusingly.
“’Bout once a year at the most.”
“Really” Rona said. Hearing confirmed what I had been told it was my turn to shoot her a look of I-told-you-so.
He had the lids off in just a few minutes and was peering down into the tanks themselves. “See here how there is this overflow pipe in the septic tank?” We had both moved closer and were looking over his shoulder—Rona into the septic tank, me into the containment tank. We were still estranged, as this would suggest. “You can see in this tank over here that the waste liquid is about half a foot below it, but then see how the alarm, this here thing which hangs down above the fluid, is about touching it. That’s what’s settin’ off the alarm. It should have been placed higher. If it had been there’d be no alarm, no need to be calling me out—though I do like getting to know you people—and more ‘en anything else you wouldn’t be fighting around with each other on such a beautiful day.” We were that obvious.
He stood up to take in the view across Johns Bay. “Mighty pretty back here. I can see why you wanted to spend more time here. I don’t get a chance to do much of that these days. Need to work two jobs. This one and driving a school bus, which I do because I like the kids and they provide health insurance. The town I mean. I couldn’t afford it myself just from emptying septic tanks. Had some cancer five years ago—doing very well, thanks—but would cost me a fortune now to have to pay for it myself. So if I were you kids,” I in fact must be at least 10 years older than he—“if I were you, I’d calm down, let me fix the alarm, which won’t take but another minute, and then get out of your way so you can get yourself something to drink and then go sit down there by the water. It’s shapin’ up to be quite a sunset.”
He stooped down to work on the alarm wire in the septic tank. Following his good advice, Rona and I were now standing side-by-side, both looking into the tank in which he was working.
“I’m just about through here,” he said turning to look at us. Though still bending into the tank he was smiling broadly. “But just one more thing, which could have many meanings.”
“We’re all ears,” Rona said, now also smiling.
“In this business shit happens fast.”
With that he roared with laughter and so did we. And it did turn out to be a magnificent sunset.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:33 AM
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