How to INSTALL your Own SEPTIC SYSTEM (w Tips From a Pro)

[Music] hey you're not Ashley nope I'm Zach this is Zach from Swiss septics and he is here to tell us all about installing a septic system in Cochise County and as you'll see from the problem after problem after problem that we ran into probably just should have hired him but if you want to DIY your own septic this is the video for you [Music] so back when we moved to our property as part of getting our permit to build the house we had to have our soil soil event I keep wanting to call it you call it a perk test perk test so I leave out same thing three Halls they dig to test like the type of soil you have so that they know what your soil absorption rate is thank you yes now this was all fine and good until we actually got to working on our house here and designing it we realized we wanted a much bigger house than what we actually permitted the subject for original person who dug the holes wouldn't call us back and we just happened to be talking to Zach and realized he ran his own Septic company and he could help us out before we knew it he was reapplying for our permit and giving us materials list and answering far too many questions I kind of blew up her phone sorry about that it's all good so before we get into all of the basics of septic systems I'm gonna let Zach tell you about his company hello I'm Zach with Smith Septic Service uh we serve all of Cochise County and Southern Arizona we do designs installations pumping inspections you name it anything septic-wise we handle it you also answer texts from random people about septic systems yes I do but don't do that to him [Music] so let's start at Ground Zero the soil evaluation required for everybody no matter what kind of septic system you're going to do composting traditional what exactly does that involve Smith's epic will come out to your property and we will bring our equipment out we will dig a series of three holes uh two in the primary area and one in a backup area or expansion area if you ever need to expand okay from those test holes we will do a soil classification and assign your soil a soil absorption rate from them from there I can take that information coupled with your floor plan and your site plan that you have it can be a rough sketch it can be a full-on cad drawing I've gotten drawings on toilet paper of just where the house is going to be I just have to know where the house is going to be to decide the best location for the setting based off your drawings and the location of the house and that soil absorption rate I put together a packet for you to get your permit it consists of all the adeq paperwork the soil breakdown the septic design sheet which is actually the blueprint of the septic right and then a site plan all of that paperwork is what you need to get your permit with the county okay and just for reference you guys charge how much to come out and dig those holes and file all that paperwork we charge 750 for the paperwork from that point I can either submit it for the permit yeah which is 300 bucks or you can do it yourself right the 300 is like what you as the homeowner have to pay to have that permit that is correct so no matter how much of the system you want to DIY this is the one step at least in Cochise County that you can't do by yourself you have to have someone certified like Zach [Music] so let's start with sizing your tank how do you arrive at the size septic tank you need when you're doing this process well first off the size of the tank is determined by your number of bedrooms and bathrooms okay with that your five bedrooms that assigns it a 750 gallon per day flow rate meaning a 1500 gallon tank so once you have that math you can plug that in and then it tells you how many chambers you need or perforated pipe or whatever technology you're going with but you have to have that first number to get to the second number that same flow rate plugged into a formula with your soil absorption rate which we achieved in your soil eval in this case it's a 0.8 750 gallons per day all of that coupled together tells me how big to design your system for you personally [Music] a couple of other important things that we ran into as issues distances from not only your house but also your property lines setbacks setbacks yes setbacks are crucial setbacks meaning you know the minimum setback from a building is 10 feet that means you can't be within that 10 feet you've got to be out at least that far okay property lines in most cases depending on where you are it can be either a five feet provided the property beside you has a developed water system or not if it does not and it's vacant land it's got to be 50. that's where we ran into problems because it is a vacant lot uh and so the I guess the idea is that if someone were to ever move in there and put a water system in then our subject would be too close to their water system and it wouldn't be good the well driller would have to drill 50 feet on on their side creating that 100 foot setback from a well to to your septic any part of your subject so that's another thing if you have a well on your property that also has to be a certain assistance you still have to be 100 feet from septic okay one of the other critical setbacks is from washes if the wash drains more than 20 acres it's an established wash then the setback from that is 50 feet okay that's that's good to know so the other important thing and you may remember when we were building uh the casa de caca was that we knew we were going to plumb that into the septic tank and that we had to get the drop right the drop was crucial and it was really a pain because we had to go under our sway which is Doug down 18 inches thankfully there was some natural drop on the property and you're supposed to go quarter inch per foot so by the time we got down there it was almost two feet that the inlet had to be dropped below grade into the ground to get that drop to work from all the way up at the Outhouse a conventional septic system is gravity meaning that it uses gravity to get from the source to the tank to the d-box out into your leech Fields so elevations are critical so once it reaches the tank your d-box you have your outlet you're right it's gonna there's gonna be a drop from the outlet to the d-box from the d-box to the bottoms of the trenches in your leech field is all going to be lower it's going to step down as you go out from the tank yeah and so we had our tank hole dug down two feet lower than it probably would have been if we didn't have this other Outhouse project and we were just coming from the house but it was kind of a rough dig so we had to get down in there make sure it was very level and and smooth and ready for that tank to be down here we just got word that the septic is finally on its way so I'm going to go over here to our septic holes I'm going to walk you through it real quick we're gonna make sure everything is still good and it's ready for them to set it in foreign [Music] with our super sandy soil is that a pit like this is constantly losing material so I've been in this several times trying to get the sides evened out and there's still stuff that keeps just trickling down it's going to be a pretty tricky process to set this whole thing in here I'm gonna pull my level out check the edges again hopefully we'll be good when they get here in a few minutes [Music] it is finally happening the septic is here and we're gonna get it installed with the help of pitia [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] once your pit is prepped the septic tank install is pretty straightforward besides making sure that it's pointed the right direction you just want to make sure that it's level both side to side and front to back [Music] thank you [Music] one thing that Padilla actually told us we should do is put some water in the septic tank because if it were to rain too much that tank could actually float up and move out of its place and then it wouldn't be level anymore it would be a whole thing to have to redo it so we filled it up halfway just as the storm was coming in foreign [Music] because our tank was buried so far underground we got these risers to raise up the inspection ports so that we could still get to them without having to dig everything up again so once your tank is in the ground you're not done unfortunately you still have to have an area for the water that goes through the septic system to leech out into leach field and then it goes down your soil and filters out because the whole thing but there's lots of different ways you can do that right yes there's there's two types of leech field systems that we utilize here in Cochise County one being your your rock and pipe system and the other being infiltrator in your case we have infiltrators in the ground right and so these are these sort of half circle shaped plastic domes that all get interlocked together in a really long trench and actually as I asked you about this the other day they actually have holes in the top which I thought was kind of weird they are louvered so explain like the the idea of this water goes into this this cavity and and then what happens like what's the purpose of that so when you're all said and done and you install these Chambers you have a three foot wide by whatever the length of your leash line is boy half circle if you will water comes in from the d-box drops down into the end cap and percolates not only do you get percolation down but you also get evaporation up and out I know you said you do a lot of these chamber installs versus the rocking pipe what's the difference why would you choose one over the other I found it Case Case by case basis I found that rock and pipe the materials are a little cheaper but they're more labor intensive the infiltrators are a little more expensive but a lot less labor if I've got tight Corners to work with I'll generally go rocking pipe if I've got a large chunk of land and no restrictions on what I have to work with then I'll do Chambers just a quick break in this video to say thank you to our these are tiring they're the people that help support us every single month and we know not everybody can be a homie and that's totally fine just by liking this video watching it sharing subscribing all of that helps us too yep so the names are almost finished and I would like to wrap up this subject how about you I've been wanting to wrap it up for three months okay let's get back to it [Music] so that brings us to our major set of problems with our particular septic install is that with our soil type and based on the size of our house and our bedrooms and all that we needed two 72 foot leech lines going out with these Chambers in them now you can see based on this overhead view that that would have put us into our neighbor's property that wouldn't have worked but the cool thing is that you can start dividing them so explain how that works so your system called for 272 Footers as you mentioned right what I did is I broke it up into four four lines yeah and as long as you meet that minimum square footage that the soil eval told me that I needed to have you can break it up into four trenches you can break it up into five trenches as long as you got that equal distribution in some cases when you break it down you've got to add Chambers to get the to get equal lengths on each on each line now that was one problem we ran into is is we we needed like half an extra chamber and so it actually extended the length of all of the tray inches longer than we thought because you you can't count the end caps as part of that square footage yes which we didn't know Chambers only Chambers only yeah and those they add about two feet each right so when you're digging a three foot wide by four five foot deep trench and now you got to go back another four feet that's an enormous amount of dirt to move by hand which is where we just ran out of gas and we had to call Zach to come help us so when when you see the design on the paperwork I'll generally lay it out what we say 272 Footers okay when in actuality he needed 274 Footers to counting the end caps but adeq does not give you credit for the end caps it's the chambers only and so by diying it I sort of missed that crucial bit of it where if you came out you would just come out and dug them and popped everything in it would have been fine you would have seen the pitfalls of being too close to the fence line or not being far enough or whatever but we were just going off of it's a 36 foot trench we're going to measure 50 defeat and then come up and then we ran into issues because then all of a sudden we're digging too far out and we're having to move everything back and it turned into a whole thing should have called Zach [Music] foreign [Music] Trader system because we did a bunch of ourselves and it was really pretty straightforward I mean it's just these Chambers and they kind of lock into place when we come out and we dig them we we get all our elevations and we dig our way out but we're we're raking the bottom of the trench and we're laying the chambers as we go right and it's important that that trench is is flat and less nice and flat all the way down right that is correct yes so when you lay the chambers one chamber will lay in like this and then once we break out a little farther dig a little farther and we're laying the chambers this next chamber will come in and lay on top and clip in the chambers have these little plastic clips that lock them together okay and then you're supposed to put some like dirt on the side yeah it just kind of keeps them back moving around here it's pretty easy I was surprised I thought it was going to be like a whole thing okay let's talk about a few other important things that I didn't know about digging trenches for these infiltrators one of the things is key things is a separation between the trenches infiltrator specifically States minimum of five feet between the trenches now they also have a minimum coverage over the top which means the minimum amount of dirt you can have over top the chamber is 12 inches now infiltrator also states that the max amount of dirt you can have over top of the chamber is eight feet because you don't want to break those plastic it's ABS yes yeah so before I sent you a message and asked you about this we were doing researches online we're like how far apart do you put your infiltrator trenches in the you know the first answer Google threw up was one foot uh that was not correct and I'm glad that we asked because I guess here in our soil in Arizona at least they have different recommendations to put these things in so don't always trust Google yeah we follow the manufacturer's installation instructions on the installation of the chambers that's why you call Zach so like I said earlier the The Trenches for this were really our biggest problem because we had them pre-dug based on our measurements which weren't quite correct they weren't deep enough long enough they were the right distance apart essentially but our sandy soil also meant they were caving in on each other it turned to a whole thing so Zach was nice enough to come out and dig that last like four to six feet with his three foot bucket it took like no time see when you have the right tools that's why we are Smith Septic [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] part of this is the distribution box which you like to call it the d-box there's a lot of things I did not know about the d-box and it caused almost caused us to have to redo the whole thing one thing about the d-box is that it's typically set on Native undisturbed soils so that if you do get some settling the d-box is not going to shift the d-box is just what it is it's a point of distribution for the effluent coming out of the tank and it's equally distributed to however many lines you have via level or speed levelers is what they call them it's got to come out of the tank and drop and then out of the d-box then it also has to drop to all of your Chambers or your rocking pipe or whatever yep whatever whatever leech field you have adeq mandates that we have equal distribution to each trench getting the d-box on native soil and getting it level is another critical point if you don't get it level you're not going to get equal distribution you're going to flood one line you're gonna be calling somebody in four or five years being like my septic's failing and all of your Excellence being channeled to that one trench and not equally distributed to the others so the thing that frustrated me the most when we started looking at this is the thin wall PVC versus like schedule 40 versus ABS why are there so many different pipes and what are their purposes different pipes that have different applications generally an aseptic system are used in schedule 35 thin wall unless I'm crossing a driveway if I'm crossing a driveway or I've got a lot of heavy traffic crossing the main line going to the tank then I'll use a thicker wall pipe such as schedule 40 or ABS is there any reason to use ABS versus schedule 40. that's just a personal preference it can be plumbed with either okay so so like in our case we did transfer because the pipe coming out of the tank is schedule 35 but we transitioned to ABS to go up to the Outhouse because it goes right under our driveway and we wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to break when we drove over it well one thing to keep in mind is that Lowe's in Home Depot will sell you a four inch sewer line pipe perforated when it comes to rock and pipe that is not acceptable if it's deeper than two feet because that is such a thin wall type it can Crush so although they say it's sewer line avoid using it but we did coming out of the tank we did use schedule 35 to the infiltrators because there's not a lot of flow um there's not a you're not driving over you shouldn't be driving over it right yeah yeah avoid avoid driving over them if you can if you got to turn a trailer around or something periodically it's not gonna affect it but avoid it if you can no high traffic areas yes [Music] so connected to the outlet of the separate tank there's this weird yellow filter thing what is that what's his purpose so that filter is in there as a last-ditch effort from preventing any kind of suspended solids in your tank from getting out into your leech field right that filter should be maintained once a year pulled out sprayed out put back in because if it gets clogged with solids they get suspended in your tank it can plug and cause you backups so in a septic tank you've got two compartments you've got the inlet side you've got the outlet side there is a baffle what we call a baffle divider wall between the two compartments with a hole about halfway up from the floor guys the solids and the waste come into the inlet side the solids break down and settle to the bottom your fat soils and greases are as we were taught it's called fog which is your soap scums your anything that is your shampoos your all that stuff will rise to the top right in that Center layer is the effluent that's what transfers over to the outlet side and so the tank is designed to when you push water in from your Source it's going to push water out of that that effluent that Center section into the d-box so that yellow filter is just in case some of the solids didn't go down to the bottom they might still be floating and so it catches them as that water comes up yes one thing we're recommending with the chamber system is an inspection port in the end for two reasons uh one it lets you as the homeowner know hey there's my leach field and two it's a point of access to your leach field to check and see if it's full and that that goes back to the d-box and the levelers with equal distribution you want to get it equally distributed to all the release fields [Music] foreign this is the one thing if you're doing the opt out that you do have to have someone official come out and inspect your work and you have to get a passing grade or else you can't use it that is correct when they come out and look at your installed septic system what are they looking for so on the infiltrator systems it's it's one inspection Rock and pipe is generally two they come out on the Rock and pipe and they measure the depth of the trenches you put Rock and pipe in it they come back and make sure you've got the required depth of gravel underneath your perf pipe um the infiltrators it's one inspection you dig your trenches you install your leech Fields you call for the inspection one thing the inspector is going to look at first thing he's going to look at your tank he's going to put a level on your tank make sure it's level left to right and front to back so he's going to check your d-box generally we leave our d-boxes open with water in them and the speed levelers you'll generally check your pipes coming out of the d-box to your trenches to make sure you got fall to them right and then he'll walk each trench and make sure you've got the required number of Chambers as per plan yeah and he'll also check setbacks and stuff like that now if you hired Zach to come do this he would submit two extra things at the end of this process a water tightness test and an as built plan I just wanted to jump in here and mention that you can submit both of these things yourself as an owner Builder as bill is very simple you just measure all your distances lay it out and send it over the water tightness test is a little more complicated you need to put a decent amount of water in your tank wait 25 four hours come back measure the level then wait another hour measure the level again and as long as there is no significant difference then your tank is watertight you can fill out all that information and sign it and send it in yourself once those two things are submitted the health department will issue a discharge authorization and close your septic permit and you're done then you get to cover it back up and not think about it for at least how long generally based off the usage obviously you want to maintain that filter uh once a year once a year typically the larger households they a general pump and clean out every three to five years is a good idea when you pump you're pumping the solids out you're pumping all the solids what about the scum does that kind of stay there do you worry about that so far our company comes out we we now do pumping okay our company comes out and we mix all of that up into a smoothie mmm wait then we pump it all out and we we know once we pump it all out then you're good for another three to five years proper maintenance as with anything is key to the longevity of your septic that's what I'm learning about every single thing on our Homestead holy smokes everything requires maintenance so much maintenance I need like a huge maintenance calendar for all the things so I want to wrap this up because this project took us three months and when Smith's septic comes out it takes about a day so I'm just I'm just throwing that out there that you know if you want to get it done quick you can pay some money and get a professional to do it or you can be like me and dig in the dirt for three months and then call them anyway you can find Smiths you can find Smith septics on the web at Smith septics.com or on Facebook at Smith septics LLC we're just a phone call away yes they are I know because I've called them a whole lot okay let's talk about cost real quick I know you're thinking did DIY in this septic actually save as much well yeah it did of course because we only paid for materials and not the labor the cost for all this is nearly doubled in the last couple of years when we got our initial quote to install a 1 000 gallon tank it's about 5500 and by the time we were ready to put this in we paid at least that much just in materials obviously the labor part of that is going to vary based on your soil type and if you go rocking pipe versus the infiltrators and how much gravel you got to bring in right now in 2023 I would ballpark work a system like this probably in the 10 to 12 000 range another option here in the county is a composting system so you would use a composting toilet but you still have to supplement with a smaller septic tank system those usually run about four to six thousand dollars and you would need to talk to Zach or to the county about the specifics of how all that works so yeah we did save some cash up front but we wasted a lot more time so you just got to decide which is more important to you dude thank you so much we really appreciate it I know it's been fun I know a lot of people are gonna really benefit from knowing how this process works and benefit from knowing someone they can call when it goes wrong I'm always open to phone calls if you've got questions you can find me reach out I'll be happy to answer any questions you have awesome all right that's it we'll see you next time [Music] thank you you have to get a septic test home right a secretary absolutely Val you have to get a soil eval it's like it's not a hole it's three hole I know that that's correct yeah dump it bring it back down that's dumb it's real dumb it was the second chamber does solids should flow to the ground yeah you keep saying float to the ground Arizona Department of Environmental Quality Matt gotta call somebody certified like Zach to actually publish submit no to file not file would be like submitting to fill out how about we just say that you have to do this stuff all right box which in turns pushing pushes pushes excellent [Applause] okay ready

Channel: Tiny Shiny Home

Views: 544,960

Keywords: off grid, septic system, how to, build your own septic system, tiny house septic options, diy septic system for tiny house, homestead living off the grid, tiny house, self reliance, septic tank installation, septic tank how it works, septic tank, septic tank cleaning, septic system installation, diy septic tank installation, diy septic tank riser, diy septic tank system, diy septic system install

Id: oAsd7ScjGcs

Length: 27min 42sec (1662 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023