Your Septic System: Worst Mistakes

all right today we're at a uh septic inspection which is part of the contingency for the buyer to buy this home in this video you're gonna learn all about private home septic systems hey jerry good to see you good to see you so jerry i know before we even get to the site here uh back at the office when our order comes in some preliminary work starts to take place can you kind of just explain what happens so it all starts at the office i've got three secretaries there and you're buying a house you're going to call hall septic service we need to know how old is the house is there any history of repair how often was it cleaned are you high on a hill are you low in the valley near a creek or stream the higher up you are the better things absorb low flat near a stream again a high water table not as good my secretaries are getting all that information where is the septic tank at we got to know by the way this is a second septic system in this property that's gonna be important down the road and there's two sets of drain fields out there the old ones and the new ones they need that information the county will send us any documentation that they have once we have a documentation i can now tell you about it but i have a picture to show you most people don't know about poo so i gotta teach you you're gonna buy this house you don't want a septic issue because it get back up in your house and your basement makes a heck of a mess so we're here we're looking at the house you know that everything is in the back of the house is that typical that it's in the back of the house we know this the well and the septic are going to be the opposite whether the well is here on the side of the house and the septic's here or in this case the wells out front the septic's in the back so when you're inside and you're flushing the toilet and using the drains doing laundry and things like that it's coming down through the main drain of the home and then it's coming outside at some point and then what happens a septic system is as simple as one two and three one is the main pipe that's connected to that house every sink tub and wash basin is connected to it it's gonna come down your main four inch line to the front of your septic tank all septic systems are like that a tank is usually rectangular in this case we have two clean outs that's the front and that's the rear usually we only have on an older system a front six inch cleanout you'll hardly ever see this in the rear so these are both cleanup pipes or inspection ports from the ground set on top of the tank when they poured that tank not only is it four by eight but it's five feet in depth for the thousand gallon capacity they had to pour a hole in the front and the rear of the tank so they can enter and exit and when they did they poured the outlet hole two inches lower than the inlet pipe so when we do an inspection we'd start running water from the house and we'll have a continuous water flow the water flow can never rise over top of that pipe you can run all the water flush all the toilets what comes in must go out at the front of the tank while they were pouring the tank they poured a wall remember the tank is five feet in depth itself that wall is shaped just like this for 18 inches front baffle the most important part of the tank is right here the rear baffle now on top of your house you have a vent pipe they let the gases out of your house and it lets your gravity system flow without air it would gurgle and burp you have to have air poo flows downhill and that's what we want it to do the solid toilet paper is being pushed that's all just gravity flowing being pushed and there's enough force to push it underneath the front baffle poo toilet paper and all these other products float on top of the septic tank do they belong in there like baby wipes and all like that no but they all float and they'll float across so they hit the rear baffle right where the water meets the the air and it says hey let's go play in the dream field that'd be a lot of fun that rear bible says you can't do that i want to keep all you guys you're trapped in the tank bacteria breaks poo down like a glass of metamucil it just slowly sifts through the water lays on the bottom of sludge we don't care but when you come home and you start the laundry dishes showers whether you ran 20 50 or 100 gallons of water clear water you're pushing affluent or poo out to the drain fields the less of this that goes out there the longer that lasts and that's where the money is it's a minimum of six thousand dollars for a set of drain fields they can it can go up to thirty thousand dollars so that rear baffle is probably then the most important baffle it is the most important part of the septic tank when that baffle goes down everything goes out as a solid now when you pee and poo that's actually body salts and acids and salts and acids eat concrete and they'll eat that balfour right at that sewage line usually i've seen it fall off completely or it will start to deteriorate the baffle from the water level up now we've got the affluent and it's got to go filter that's what it does put filters through the earth so from the concrete distribution box the county health department and the builder or the backhoe person decided where those drain fields were going to go the standard would be a hundred foot that means they'll dig two 50-foot trenches two feet wide ten feet deep and in those ten foot holes will give you eight feet of stone on top of that stone comes a four inch pipe this plastic pipe that's got holes every six inches apart perforated pipe that sits on top of it and that whole thing is covered up with a mulch blanket and then the earth goes on top so as the affluent leaves it comes down to the distribution box and we start here going down through the first hole in the beginning of its life filtering out through all that gravel in the earth when it seals up it goes to the next hole and the next hole and the next hole and at some day the promise would be your drain fields will be full of crap literally because the affluent will seal the pores of the earth and the gravel people that have septic problems they brought it on themselves it's the things they flush in there when i get out there i'm looking for brown and you look down in there and it's white or yellow that's grease they're taking that pan of grease and they're pouring that grease right down the sink and it comes here and it absolutely solidifies so how about garbage disposals i hear you know pros and cons and before the old days they weren't allowed now you see them on properties with a private septic systems does that decrease the lifespan of the septic system you're in the kitchen got a couple leftover beans corns carrots or whatever they will become laden heavy with water and they start sifting down through the water like affluent next time you flushed in water here now you're pushing carrots beans corns and everything else out there don't do that use a trash can but the less that you use of them send anything out here the longer they're going to last now the important thing is for the inspection today is to either pass or fail this system and so that the buyer really knows what kind of condition this system's in because of the amount of money that they have to pay once it fails so you said this house is in the 50s it was built in the 50s it's on its second septic system how long does the septic system last that has properly been maintained and cared for we know back in the day the old metal tanks 20 years almost 20 years they were collapsing when they're replaced with a concrete tank pretty much other than a rear baffle going out or this pipe corroding we don't know how long the concrete tanks are going to last or at least four inches thick they're super strong the average set of drain fields last 35 years if you don't do stupid flush things you live on a hill with really good perk perk five minute perk a three minute perk that means this is like the ocean coming at you and this and the beach just absorbs it all but we can stick around for 35 45 an hour perk that's not a good perk the water's not absorbing into the ground good at all so we're not going to get 50 years out of that but the people on the hill that absorb good they can get 50 plus energy records being broken 60 years 60 years but you'll know it's going to surface or it's going to back up one of the two are going to happen and then you have to make a decision what to do and there are ways and we're going to test those drain fields today oh yeah they normally run water an hour before i even show up i want that and if that water's run for a whole hour we walk out across the backyard it's firm and dry just like it is here this is and we've had some rain we've had some snow but for this time of year it's not rock hard but it's firm and that's the way it should be we don't have squish so the backyard when we go out there should be exactly like it is here we always walk the area to check that now jerry the first thing that comes to my mind when you say something like that is the seller to run water for an hour before you come and it sounds sort of like counter intuitive to what they would do because they want it to be nice and firm they don't want it to be mushy and fell so how do you assure or know that that's happened that's why we let the realtor i love our realtors and the realtors are representing your realtors are representing a client and that's why the realtors normally come out early to do what we need done normally the sellers of a house are not here during an inspection that's really important and they get it so the buyer's agent would be the one to come out and get things going usually yes all right so what are we doing what's next all right so we want to start the beginning of the tank the rear of the tank we're going to open it up i got to make sure i got my waterfall i got to make sure i got my front bath went so by looking down in here that's where the front inlet pipe would be and that wall you see right there that is the baffle wall it's a plastic very thin yeah very thin yes it is now just behind it what color is that white it's white or yellow so they're flushing grease this is a rental house right now and i now want to contact the owners of the house to tell them they're pouring grease down the sink if a septic system had backed up it will recess back down in time usually it will leave traces of pure toilet paper on the inside of the cleanout pipe so this is not backed up you'll also see on the baffle you'll see where the toilet paper might be laying on top of it and other products i don't see that either so a lot of grease yeah there is a lot of water this is going to have to be talked about so then we come back to the back of the tank here's my rear baffle you can see on this side look at the color of that it's yellow it's yellow so they're definitely poor grease down here since this is the second system and that they're flushing grease down the drains that's critical can you put a third system in a place like this you can here's how i explain it here's a piece of bread and here's my knife and i just dipped into i can't believe it's not butter i go across there one time with all the holes and the pores of the bread the holes are not there anymore and that's what grease does it will pack all those little holes where the gravel know is it would just absolutely seal them kill them quickly so they won't get the 50 plus years that some people are getting by flushing grease down in there by the way we're here today to clean this tank too we're going to thoroughly clean it and when the tide's clean you and i are going to look back in that hole and say look at the difference we don't have that yellow anymore it's clean it should look like top of a pond or a lake when the tank is clean [Music] ha ha here's what i want gentlemen this is what a clean tank looks like look how shiny it is it's got to be clean and that is an absolute clean tank all right jerry so we're done with the actual tank inspection it's been pumped out it's been flushed a couple times you're very happy with that the baffles are in place i got a plastic pipe going out the last thing i need to do for a septic inspection is to test the drain fields and by the way we already did that because when we pumped it down nothing ran into the back of the tank if some terminal drain fields as you're pumping it down you can actually see the water or hear the water running into the back of the tank it's not so that's another check off on the list the last thing we need to do is walk out in this backyard and the yard as you you and i can feel right now we've had some snow some rain but it's firm it's firm to the foot if we walk around here and we hear squish squish is not good that could be drain field surfacing and it'd be wet green could smell and we want to check out another thing i can do i could take this probe and you can actually probe down through the earth and you go down in here and when you pull it out i need to probe and hold stick to be dry and that's just a classic example of probing and it coming out dry drain fields that are not functioning are about ready to completely die or to surface you'll have it dripping wet and it'll be black see how clear that is so that's just the earth so we're going to walk around notice as we walk feel the ground it's got to be firm we know that those drain fields are right across this backyard here [Music] sporadically probe dry and we know you're in the drain field because you would never be able to push that probe down through solid earth yeah solid earth is tough and that happens too you can also sometimes at the end of the drain field you can feel the gravel as you're going through it like right there there's gravel pull it up completely dry and that's what we're looking for [Music] that ain't dry is it see how wet it is but everything's dry except for right there that could be the beginning of a drain field surfacing depending what they got so now i will check with the health department for this client and see if we can't determine if it's a 75 foot drain field and we'd have never known that had we not walked out here we would have never known now so how interesting everything's firm and dry i got wet spot right there and as you're describing it as it would fail or begin to fail the holes are clogging up closest to the tank so by it surfacing down there is that the course that it would take right that it so it's from beginning to end right so it's pushing it all the way to the end there's nowhere else for it to go there's no more gravel remember the round pipe with the perforated holes in it so once that fills and seals it's got to go to the next hole next hole so it's designed to move on out and then when you get to the end of that gravel it's going to hit the earth and then it will just come up because they can't filter it anymore there are natural springs but i'm dry over here dry over there right there it has something what do you tell the buyer in this situation in this situation if that in fact is a 75-foot drain field in this case we're going to notify the homeowner and let them know we have every reason to believe that that's the beginning of a surfacing drain field not big yet but over time it's not going to be somewhat clear as it is now it's going to get brown and if it's summertime it's really going to start stinking so there's every reason in the world to have it cleaned but we don't know yet we're still it could be a natural spring there's natural springs and yards but it's right there so we don't know yet but we're going to find out we're going to get that documentation from the county and see if they can pinpoint that we know the first two set of drain fields were over there this sets over here we've still got all this room here for another one all right jerry so we're going to wait for your report um we'll get that and then we'll let the buyer know do you think the grease had anything to do with maybe that drain field if it is failing greece has a huge deal to do with not getting the longevity on drain fields that we should have that might be it if that's what that is thank you jerry see you next time thank you very much have a great one thanks for watching this video we hope that you learned a great deal about private septic systems and if you're buying a home with a private septic system make sure you get an inspection just like this if you appreciate this video hit the like button see you next time [Music] saks realty maryland broker number 607720 office number 443-318-4514 equal housing opportunity

Channel: Sachs Realty

Views: 1,489,976

Keywords: home septic systems, private septic systems, before you buy a home with a private septic system, buying a home with a private septic system, what to look for when buying a home with a private septic system

Id: EcyUtiahWas

Length: 16min 43sec (1003 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 06 2022