Septic woes

[Boondox]

I was out cleaning up the little B1750 so it would look pretty when I tried to sell it when the Wife yelled from the house to come quick. She flushed, the main drain in the basement gushed! Oh, shoot!

A couple of years ago on Thanksgiving Day Wife and I spent an afternoon digging thru the snow trying to find the unmarked and long-buried septic tank. Our tenant at the time, a social parasite if there ever was one, was having similar problems. Eventually we found a broken metal pipe sticking up at a funky angle...below that was a 6" diameter hole leading WAY down to a fluid level. About 18 inches below the broken ends, however, was another pipe coming in from the direction of the house. I had a snake, but had to go belly down in the muck before I could feed it into the hole. Five minutes work, and it cleared the plug of soap scum, grease, cigarettes and the parasite's tampons. Yuck!

The experience was so traumatic I put a plastic barrel over the site and fenced it out to keep the dogs away...then walked away and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, the worst always seems to happen in terrible weather! 35 degrees today with 40 knot winds pelting us with pine cones and birch branches. And under that plastic barrel was the most disgusting mucky malodorous mess I've ever seen. Gag!!! /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

Nothing for it but to lay down in the muck and run the snake up the pipe again while the Wife vomited and the puppy tried to get something really nasty to chew on. Got it running again, but all I could think about was how nice it would be to get a backhoe for that new 3010 arriving next week. And while I'm laying there in pure stench clinging to that wonderful thought, Wife smacks me on the head and tells me "Don't even THINK about asking for a backhoe!"

Darn. So close, yet so far away!

Pete

 

[Thomas]

I hope you wash under your finger nails and your wife takes you out to dinner after that.

Got to admit Pete your not a quitter by any means,but if the septic problem can't get you a backhoe attachment nothing will...guess your wife knows you better than you think. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Thomas..NH /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[gerard]

Pete,
You just described why I just sold all my rental properties. Real estate would be great if it weren't for the tenants!!!

 

[LazyK]

Boondox...alllllright!! Serious Caca Catastrophe!!
I give you a 7.5 for that reaction to your poopoo
pipe and drum winter wondergush phenomenon. This is a former Alaskan speaking to you with meaningful empathy....
Even in the nasal numbing narcosis of sub-zero
smell-suspension, there is a unique bouquet that
only a rogue septic system will provide.
Only true love and/or desperation allows a human being to lay in the prone position, snake in hand,
gag reflex rigidly subduded, eyes a-watering......
in the Stuff, taking on the BLOCKAGE.
Bless you!
You might consider Fed EPA Super Fund participation
if you send in a sample of your primeval ooze.
Breeder spores for exotic weapons are always appreciated.

Lazy K - Chip

 

[Bird]

Pete, you have my sympathy. I had to do about the same thing Christmas Eve. The kids and grandkids had all been here, and when they left that evening and I took a shower, the drain didn't./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif First figured grandkids must have put something down a toilet, but found it was just grease build-up in the line between the house and tank. It was cold and windy and no fun, but nothing nearly as bad as yours; no snow, I have a clean out fitting between the house and tank, and when I had mine installed, I insisted on a 6" concrete collar around the opening on the first tank so I don't have to dig it up; just remove the cover from the collar, then pull the lid from the top of the tank.

Bird

 

[M. Sullivan]

You have my sympathy--disgusting!!! Might do the math for a new septic system vs. the bh--included resale of the bh once you're done. Just don't commit to the resale date! Seriously, around here a new field is around $3k minimum with average more like $6-7k....all depends on soil and lay of the land. Not to mention the benefit of doing it yourself if old waste material has to be removed--many areas consider it toxic waste (big $$ to dispose). Good luck.

 

[GlueGuy]

Oh gawd /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif! Yucko pooey! What a s**tty job! I do not envy you one little bit. Hope everything comes out OK.

Got to admit that I wonder about this part of our homestead too. However, I have managed to stay out (so far). One good thing is the previous owner had the tank cleaned out just before we moved in, and there are no trees or shrubs between the house and the tank.

Some time in the next year or so, I would like to put a couple of cement sleeves down around the cleanouts so they are easier to get to. I will remember this story in the mean time!!

GlueGuy

 

[markcg2000]

Yuck! My experience was not so bad. Where the pipe leaves the house in the basement, there is a drain cap that sits at about chest level... I pull off the cap, and good thing I was wearing clothes I never wanted to see again /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

mark

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Yucky Yucky!

There are companies that make septic system chemical additives that you all may want to have a look at. Some are purely for smell, some provide a kick-start to a system that is performing poorly, some kill tree roots, and some even EAT GREASE. I don't have the web addresses, but a good search engine will guide you to all the products out there. I have never tried any, but I sure as heck would if my alternative was to take a swim in that stuff...

 

[dmccarty]

Boondox,

Thanks for the laugh and the shudder at the same time! I really appreciate the shear genius of trying to get a backhoe out of this disaster. Course your wife is just as smart or smarter. Seems like they always are!

I have a couple of septic stories. Thankfully they have not happened to me.

A guy at work had a clogged drain. So he went into his crawl space to snake it out via one of the cleanouts. Mission accomplished he saw another cleanout and got curious. BAD idea. REAL BAD idea. One he should have thought about and left alone. See, his house plumping was BELOW the main level and required a pump. He forgot or did not realize this little tid bit of information. And then he opened the cap. Of course his crawl space flooded with sewage from HIS pipe and I guess what ever was at the main level. Shudder...... His telling his far better than mine.

He puked a couple of times in the crawlspace escaping and cleaning the mess up. I think he had to put lime in his crawl space. On the way to work he had to pull over and puke again.

What is it about sewage that make one puke?

The next time, errrrr, hopefully there is not a next time. ANYTIME you have a bad smell you might want to try to put Vicks chest rub on your upper lip. It's supposed to cover some of the smell of bad things....

After Hurricane Floyd flooded out a good part of eastern North Carolina a few years ago, I got a group togather to help clean out peoples houses. I have some stories about that disaster..... The smell was pretty bad. I never want to see or smell that again... I was lucky enough to miss the diary herd that drowned and had to be carried out in dump trucks to the land fill. I did see the three carcasses of the cows that had climbed into a mobile home to try to save themselves. They somehow got INTO the home and then drowned. The water went over the home which was strapped in. They just burned the trailer with the cows inside. I got there the day after, the home was still smuldering and it looked like a BBQ gone real bad! We kept the windows rolled up though..... And down the street from this were 5 to 10 pound bass and catfish dead in the street. Unreal.

South of this was a little town that was wiped out. We were down stream of the cities sewage plant. REAL bad smell. Lots of wonderfull stuff floating in the water. The poor animals that got left behind were just miserable. They had to drink the water. Swim in it. They were really in bad shape. The NC Vet Hospital cured many of them. All the crops were dead. Black dead. Not drowned dead. But black dead from stuff in the water. The bad thing was there were idiots riding around ATVs in this stuff. I would hate to think what they could/did catch....

The weird thing was how gracious and civil the people were. They were completely and I do mean completely wiped out. And since they were small towns that usually meant a good part of the family if not the entire family lost all of their posessions. Several generations. I know many of them were simply in shock.

But I digress. Whenever I hear about bad smells and sewage I think of this stuff. Fridges/Freezers full of food that had not power for weeks. Wonderful smell.....

Later.....
Dan McCarty

 

[Bird]

Dan, you remind of an incident several years ago when we lived in town and a friend and neighbor across the alley came over and borrowed my portable air compressor one evening to air up his kids' bicycle tires, then returned it. The next day they went on vacation for a week, then a week or so after they got back, she went out in the garage to get something out of the freezer. He had unplugged it to plug in the air compressor at that outlet and forgot to plug it back in. She called him at work to come home and help. He came home, opened the freezer, ran out in the alley and puked, and she had to clean it out herself. They set the freezer out in the driveway for a couple of weeks and tried everything from lemon juice to vinegar to charcoal to get rid of the odor, and finally called someone to haul the freezer off to the landfill./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Bird

 

[putty340]

Ok dmcarty, now I have to ask, what does the stand for?

 

[dmccarty]

is an emoticon. In this case it is a smiley face wearing glasses. is a smiley face without glasses.

8-; is a face sticking its tongue out.

8-( is a frown. :-( for those with good eyes.

There are dozens of emoticons but these are the main ones I use.

I'm afraid my fingers are too trained to than type in the html to get /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif.

Plus it less characters to type. aka /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Hope this helps... /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
Dan

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by dmccarty on 02/13/01 09:54 AM (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[alexcocco]

Re:freezer failure

in one of my former lives i sold appliaces, never saw a freezer you could get the smell out of after that spoiled food catastrophe, best thing just send the freezer to the dump, food and all. what unique smell they seem to have which takes on a life of its own.

now i work in an operating room, som unusual oders there too, we use vicks in our masks to help with the real bad ones also.

alex

 

[Boondox]

Re:Vicks in the nose

Vicks works really well except in cold weather. Using it below ten degrees gives me the mother of all frontal headaches!. And I'm not sure why I can still smell sewage in cold weather. It seems like my nose is immune to all scents save that one when it gets much below freezing.

Pete

 

[jfakerj]

Re:freezer failure

I had the cord go bad on my freezer a few years ago. It was off for at least a week in the summer. We emptied it and filled it with water and bleach and let it set for a couple of days. It worked just fine and we still have the freezer. No smell. That's the same thing it do for my coolers that I put fish in.

Jerry

 

[Boondox]

It happened again!

This time I gave up and called Roto-Rooter. Took an hour, but it pulverized all the crud in the pipe. Now I've got to pump the tank dry to get all that pipe crud out.

Cost me $135 and worth EVERY CENT!!!

Pete

 

[Thomas]

Re: It happened again!

Kinda strange how events like this seem to only happen in the dead of winter instead of the summer months.

To get a septic pump around these parts cost $250.oo,and like you said Pete "worth every cent"

Thomas..NH /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

 

[ronjhall]

Re: It happened again!

Pete, That price even with a pump out /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif will not get anywhere near to a Backhoe price./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif