Septic Tank

YourName

Bought a rural house that hadn't been lived in for 5+ years and before that was used as holiday home, renovated it and moved in over a year ago now.

Septic tank backed up a few times last winter and level was over the inlet and outlet, put it down to the percolation area being swamped due to so much rain and a raised water table, pumped out and got by.

Ground is still very dry at the moment, checked septic tank and realised it is backed up again ( backed up to a manhole approx 15m away, not to the house, yet!!), checked septic tank and discovered the inlet is in fact lower than the outlet, so effectively the septic tank will always back up in order for it to empty to percolation field.

As you can imagine, I'd like to strangle the person who put it in, but suspect they may be long gone !!!! Tank is an old concrete tank which is in a long time.

Any ideas what I can do??? Money is not so fluid at present but can do vast majority of work myself but really stumped with this one

YourName

Anyone have any ideas???

my3cents

So the septic tank was put in the wrong way around. The inlet is connected to what should be the outlet, nothing I've not seen before.

You could dig up the inlet and raise it or the outlet and lower it. In both cases you need to cut new holes in the tank and fill the old ones. The problem is whichever you do leaves either the slope to the tank to low or out of the tank too high making a lot of work on the pipe work.

Another possible would be to add an extra tank with a pump in it and pump the waste in. In the same way you could have a pump that pumps the liquid out to the percolation field.

blackbox

It should be something like this:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septic_tank#/media/File:Schematic_of_a_septic_tank_2.png

Could the ground have subsided under the tank at the inlet end? Or could there be an internal blockage?

my3cents

blackbox wrote: »

It should be something like this:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septic_tank#/media/File:Schematic_of_a_septic_tank_2.png

Could the ground have subsided under the tank at the inlet end? Or could there be an internal blockage?

The OP probably has that only with the tank turned through 180 degrees so the inlet is lower than the outlet. I know a couple of people with the same problem, but because they are in the country they just get a local farmer to pump it out and (illegally) spread it on the nearest field.

barneygumble99

Sounds something similar to us except in our case the percolation area isn’t much lower than the tank so we have a submersible pump fitted in a chamber off the septic tank. The inlet to this chamber is lower than the inlet to the septic tank. System works grand, I just keep an eye on it every now and then.

Aravo

A pump with a float switch may work.

Ideally you would want the material from toilet to gather in one tank. Then the water material flows to another compartment and the pump with a float switch is here. When the water level reaches a certain level it's triggers the float switch and pumps out. Then the process starts again.

Or could you put in new percolation trenches at a suitable level or lower the outlet pipe. The wall could be cored.

Ghetofarmulous

Could also run a longer pipe from the house around to the other side of the tank and connect to the correct inlet if orientation of the tank is the issue. That would get cheapest and simplest option I think. And a new pipe got outlet