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3 Tips To Help Keep Your Septic System Healthy and Easy To Maintain

Maintaining your home's septic system is an important part to keeping the surrounding soil healthy and preventing microbes and bacteria from entering into nearby waterways. Here are some recommendations to help keep your system healthy and maintainable.

Make the Tank Accessible

If you do not know where you septic tank's access lid is, you should locate it so you can have your tank serviced regularly. Many septic tanks are installed below the soil with the access lid buried along with it. This requires you to locate the hatch and make it accessible above ground.

Locate the sewer pipe exit in your home's basement, and follow it outside in the yard. You can use a long metal length of rebar as a probe, inserting it into the soil to determine where the sewer pipe runs in the soil and connects to the septic tank.

Excavate the soil away from the tank's lid, and you can have risers installed on the tank's opening to raise it up to the soil height in your yard. With the access hatch to your septic tank visible in the yard, you will have no problem checking the sludge levels and pumping the tank, when required.

Keep Your Drainfield Healthy

Your septic system tank needs to keep the right levels of solids, wastewater, and a layer of scum. The scum will float on the wastewater and remain in the tank. The solids will sink to the bottom of the tank and collect, while the waste water will drain into the drainfield.

When your septic tank becomes too full of solid waste, some of the waste can flow out of the tank with the water and into the drainfield. The drainfield is only able to handle water runoff, which seeps into the surrounding soil. Excess solids that escape the tank can clog the drainfield and require you to have it replaced, which can cost from $5,000 to $20,000 and require excavation of your yard. It is easier and less expensive to have your septic system serviced regularly by a company such as the one represented at http://www.southernsanitarysystems.com.

Follow a Regular Tank-Maintenance Schedule

Keeping your septic tank pumped of solid waste helps to keep it working well and helps you avoid having to replace the drainfield. For this reason, it is important to know how often you need to have your system pumped. You should check the levels in your tank occasionally to determine if it needs service.

You can also follow a recommended maintenance schedule according to the size of your tank, the number of people in your household, and if you use a kitchen garbage disposal system. A smaller tank and a larger family can require you can have your tank pumped more frequently, and using a kitchen disposal can increase this frequency even more. Talk to your septic professional about checking the solid level in your tank and a recommended pumping schedule for your septic system.


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