How to Inspect your Septic System's Panel & Pump Chamber

[Music] here we are at the customer panel first thing I want you to notice is this power switch right here to my left this looks like a typical ordinary light switch but what it is in reality is a disconnect switch which controls and cuts all power for the system if this is in the opposition you will have no power to your panel the outside of the panel is very simple if you take a look as you can probably see here's the pump run switch when the pump is on this will be green and then below it you've got the alarm light and also as you can probably read below it push to silence the alarm when you have a high level or a lowlevel alarm this will flash red and you also hear an audio beeping sound which is quite annoying especially at 2 in the morning if you come out and you need to silence this alarm quickly just simply push this button and that'll kill the the alarm but it will continue to flash as a reminder that you got an issue an unresolved issue so the outside is pretty simple easy to understand and run let's take a look at the inside okay looking inside really there's the only thing you're really going to need to mess with very much at all is this switch right up here in the upper right hand corner and it simply says Auto off and manual very simple should remain remain an auto at all times in normal operation off or manual is only used if you have a problem looking below it we've got a Breakers self-explanatory we got some control functions splicing up above it here we've got a contactor which starts and stops the motor interesting to know but not necessary and then we have an hour meter of runtime for the pump which can be useful in troubleshooting and we have a uh start stop time for the pump so number of Cycles not all panels will have that but this is a pretty good example of a typical pressure distribution panel for reference let's take a look at three more examples of some panels that may look like yours and they're very common in this area let's take a look the three panels here we're going to show you all look identical on the outside they all have still the push to silence alarm along with the visual reminder as the insides where they get a little different we open this one up this is an alarm only panel there's no pump controlling function whatsoever so it's still got the switch in the right hand side but all this is going to do for you is control a alarm function period the next one we're going to look at is very similar to the customers we showed you earlier the only real difference is the it's it comes without the counter function which is not necessary nice but not required otherwise the same exact functions runs the pump has the alarm Etc the last panel I'm going to show you is the most sophisticated of all the panels we typically deal with in most systems on a normal basis for a residential application that is you'll notice here you've got a computer controller and that just allows to set the amount of times a pump is allowed to run through the day and other than that still does the exact same function the pump chambers that we're going to look at next it's usually located Downstream from the filter chamber and usually pretty nearby so let's take a look inside here and see what we've [Applause] got first things we want to look at is make sure the floats are all still working properly that the level is where it needs to be that there's no leaks in the pipe and just visually inspect make sure all looks well first of all we want to look at the splice box right here take a look see if the cords all look like they're connected securely other than that I don't recommend you do anything else on an annual basis there we're moving over this is a discharge pipe for the pump directly below this pipe is the pump can't see it it's underwater everything everything looks good don't see any leaks pipe straight Etc moving over here we have the floats tree and water level is normal we can see the different floats and they all look like they're functioning properly so next we're going to pull this float tree out and actually test make sure we can get a highle lowl alarm and that the pump functions as it should okay first thing to do is pull the cords out of the way so you can pop it P up in a wiggling motion you immediately hear the lowle alarm that's good that's only exactly what it's supposed to do and we'll just pull it clear up I definitely recommend gloves for this phase of the operation and I'm going to go ahead and tilt this this bottom float up when that comes up the lowle alarm goes off that's perfect that's test number one now test number two we're going to see if the pump works and to do that we're going to lift up this switch has to be up it's the bottom one that's the off switch so the off switch for the pump has to be on the next is the actual on switch when this comes up I don't know if you can hear that or not the pump clicked on that's perfect this will have to drop back down and then the off will have to drop down yep everything works shut it right off and then the last test to do is to check make sure your high level alarm this one's used the least well I wouldn't say that but it's it was definitely worth checking works perfect let say everything's working fine here I don't see anything it really needs to be changed so we'll just go ahead and put it back in its place and we're done [Applause] [Music]

Channel: CandETrenching

Views: 191,747

Keywords: level, high, low, pump, system, Septic, alarm, panel

Id: CHTDRzxa9OU

Length: 6min 36sec (396 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 23 2010