Above Ground Septic System | Ep4 Building Shipping Container House

this is episode 4 of how to build a shipping container house and we're gonna focus on how we installed this above-ground septic system let's begin with a question that my friend's seven-year-old daughter asked when visiting a construction site where does the poop go this is actually a really important question when designing in rural locations that don't have access to a municipal sewer system the answer for this house is a little bit different than most it ends up in these wild flower gardens when you flush the toilet run the sink or take a shower in the house the water and waste all ends up going into a 3-inch diameter pipe and flows down into a septic tank I purchased a 1500 gallon concrete septic tank and we needed a crane to drop it into the hole that we dug just about 60 feet away from the house even though the tank just looks like a big simple block it actually has a few key features inside that help it separate the waste into three different layers majority of the volume coming in is water but as it collects in the tank it starts to stratify grease oil and soap bubbles float up to the top to form a layer of scum solid waste sinks down to the bottom where it slowly dissolves to form a sludge in the middle we have a layer of water that is full of small particles of waste this is often called effluent this water is full of bacteria and chemicals like nitrogen and phosphorus which actually make really good plant fertilizer so we are gonna pump out that effluent and use it to fertilize and water the flowerbeds this is important because the 1500 gallon tank would get filled awfully quick if we didn't remove this large component of wastewater using these above-ground concrete planters wasn't our first idea originally we thought we'd do a very conventional septic system where the effluent just drains by gravity into a leach field but in order to get a leach field system approved by the county you have to perform a percolation test that demonstrates that the soil on the property can safely handle the effluent this is done by drilling holes deep into the ground and seeing how fast water disperses in the holes we tried a bunch of different locations on the property but we kept hitting rock just about a foot or two beneath the surface we finally found the location where we didn't immediately hit a rock and it was really cool to see how this giant modular drill bit snaps together so you can keep going deeper and deeper soil samples are also collected and sent to a lab for testing to determine their capacity for distributing the water and remediating it the water test wasn't looking good and later when we got back to full report from the engineering firm we learned to do to the poor draining nature of the soil we would need an area bigger than what we had available for a properly chilled the guy that we hired to dig the foundation suggested that we over excavate a large portion of the site and fill it in with soil to create an area of dirt that drains better but after half a day of trying to dig through the rock he was wearing through the teeth on this excavator really quickly and we realized it'd be cheaper just to bring in concrete containers seeing these nice solid rock walls in a trench though definitely made me think about doing a underground project in the future so we struck out on the percolation test the over excavation plan really wasn't working that well and so we turned to our friends over at action pumping to come up with a above-ground leach field design in addition to the 1500 gallon concrete septic tank we also bought four of these 1,000 gallon planters knowing that we were going to be going up against a lot of rock prevented a bigger excavator to dig the hole for the septic tank the septic company asked us to dig a hole that was one foot bigger than the tank all the way around and to put in six inches of pack down gravel in the bottom of the hole this way they'd have a nice flat surface to set the concrete tank down on without worrying about it cracking we check to see if it was Louisville and it was just a little bit off so he picked it up again and kept pushing a little bit of rock and gravel underneath it until we got it level I really like this sling or harness that they use to pick up these big concrete tanks I used a mini excavator to push a pile of dirt closer to start filling in a round a septic tank this is one of my first time she using one of these so I played it a little bit under cautious side and rather than getting too close to the edge I did a lot of hand shoveling as well I rented this mini excavator from Home Depot for about $1000 a week it only took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to use it and it came in really handy for digging and filling in the trenches for the drain pipes put a concrete planters I'm going to place them all in a row I'm just going to dig out a flat surface about eight inches deep this way I'll be able to bury the pipes that come out low but on the sides of the planters now I've made a lot of concrete things before and for a second I thought about making these planters myself but these ones only cost me about six hundred and fifty dollars each and saved me a ton of work on formwork alone I probably would have spent about a hundred dollars for each one the crane truck only had room to store two of the planters so they had to drive back to the flatbed trailer and load the last two planters before placing them seeing these large precast concrete objects gave me a lot of ideas for future projects I think it'd be really cool to make a hot tub out of one of these or can make a giant above-ground garden maze there are two holes in each planter one to supply the effluent from the septic tank and the other one is an overflow in case the planters get too full I dog at rent along the side that has these two holes we then brought in some 2-inch ABS pipe to create an overflow line that in the rare event if the planters get too flooded the excess water can then drain back into the septic tank we then installed a small pump that can send the effluent up a one-inch polyethylene line in into the planters we have a volume control valve going into each planter so that we can control the amount of effluent entering each one inside the planter the effluent will come through these PVC pipes and be distributed near the top of the planters this way it can filter down to the bottom we poured gravel around the overflow drain pipe and then put a layer of landscaping cloth over that the vertical black ABS pipe has perforations at the top and will serve as our overflow system this way if the planters get flooded the excess water will flow back into the septic tank now back down by the septic tank we had to install a dry box so that we can bring electricity down to power the pump now just in case we ever need to increase the capacity of the leach field we installed an extra outlet that can dispense effluent we used a submersible pump that is triggered by a floating buoy so when the effluent level gets too high it turns on and pumps it to the garden beds I would have preferred not to use a pump in place to planters downhill from the septic tank but under property there's a valley that when it rains channels and drains water and the building department was worried about contamination from a leach field getting caught up in flash flood waters and being swept onto neighboring properties and they wouldn't want to be a crappy neighbor we then buried all the pipes and stacked stones around the volume control valves so that we would have access to them we're gonna need a lot of soil for these planters so we picked up a trailer full of this really cheap dirt from a local landscaping company it'll be good for filling up a lot of the volume in the planters but there isn't a lot of organic nutrients in it I picked up a pallet of topsoil from Home Depot which we'll use for just the top layer of the planters that way we can kick-start a bunch of plants are growing and create a healthy ecosystem that will help remediate the effluent I used a small skip loader to start dumping the dirt on top of the landscaping cloth once the planters were about 3/4 of the way full I started getting close to the PVC outlet where the effluent was going to come through I then laid down a bed of 3/4 inch gravel that's lined on either side by some rocks a bunch of holes in a piece of two inch abs and then fit that over the PVC to disperse the effluent and then added a bunch of topsoil all around it we put some water into septic tank to test the system and then open up the handle on the volume control valve and saw that the system was working we then place more grass rock on top of the ABS pipe and our planters were ready for plants and then threw in a whole bunch of wildflower seeds and it wasn't long before we had a nice lush green flower bed after about a month of light use the system seems to be working really well but that's way too short of a test period to fully endorse a system like this the biggest advantage of the system is that it gave us a path to approval that didn't require a percolation test and when you factor in how much those tests costs and the unpredictability of the results this seemed like a worthwhile experiment this entire system costs just about eight thousand dollars which really isn't too bad considering how important it is I will post drawings and specifications for this system on my website and speaking of drawings I've had a lot of people asking if they could purchase the complete house plan set for this project so I put it up for sale on gum Road and I'll put a link to that in the description box below that being said this is going to make a fantastic vacation house but unless you're gonna build it yourself it's probably gonna be about 15 to 20 percent more expensive than conventional building methods so please don't buy this if you think it's going to be a miracle solution to your housing problems if you want to see a lot of the furniture that we're building for the interiors be sure to go to the homemade modern youtube channel that's where we show the DIY projects we recently published videos showing how to make this modern sofa and this combination planter and side table in the next episode of the modern home project we're gonna go over the electrical and HVAC systems for the house and get it ready to paint thanks for watching and be sure to subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications that way you'll know exactly when I post the next episode and lastly I just want to say I'm sorry for taking so long to get this video out I haven't put together videos at this scale before and I way overshot and there's just so much footage to go through so everything will get done and published and put up on the website but please just be patient in the meantime thanks bye

Channel: The Modern Home Project

Views: 1,013,559

Rating: 4.9187365 out of 5

Keywords: how to build a house, building a house, shipping container houses, how to build a shipping container home, shipping containers, shipping container homes, shipping container architecture, tiny houses, diy tiny houses, building a tiny house, building a modern house, the modern home project, homemade modern, container house, container architecture, container building, diy septic system, septic tank, leach field, sewage system, composting toilet, mound leach field, homesteading

Id: Lni4OODogKA

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2019