What's up everyone? Welcome back to The Durbin Compound. If you haven't met me already, my name is
Devin Durbin. So today on the channel it's a bright, nice and sunny Saturday. I hope you're enjoying
your weekend as well. Today we are going to go over how a septic system works. If you are new
to the channel, I hope to see you click Subscribe, and ring that bell because I'm coming out with
videos every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Don't miss out! And stay tuned. Let's get going.
All right guys, so let's go over the basic operation of what would be considered an
anaerobic septic tank. So an anaerobic septic tank is basically sealed off from the outside air.
It requires zero oxygen to breathe. That means all the bacteria, and everything that's inside your
septic tank, does not need oxygen to do its job or live. So every septic system is going
to be different. It is its own ecosystem. So, it's based on the household detergents that you use,
the soaps, anything that you eat and consume, and gets, you know, it's excreted out of your body and
into the tank. It will require a different ecosystem in order for it to break down and do all the things.
So everybody's septic system is going to be different in the way that the enzymes and
bacteria break it down. So, depending on where you're at, and what you're doing, you might have
a system that builds up quicker. You might have a system that never produces as much sludge as,
you know, you need to in order to get that pumped. So, let's go over a couple basics to the system.
And then we'll talk about safe levels. And then we're actually going to take you on outside. I'm going
to show you my septic system and just an easy way to check your level and what you're looking at.
So, this is a basic chamber system. This is a big concrete tank that sits down in the ground and
you literally have just two inspection ports that are above your grass. So, sometimes they're buried
and, you know, people have a hard time finding their septic tank caps. House that we previously lived at,
we never found the septic system. We had no idea where it went. We poked and prodded around in the grass
and we never found it. So, now, here where we live now, you know, we have our caps that stick out
of the ground. So you have your inspection covers. And then after you open that up, you're going to
have an inner cover. And you're going to be able to pull out that inner cover. And you're going to
be able to look down in the tank. So on the first side of the tank is your inlet side. When you open it up,
you should be looking at your inlet baffle. So your waste from your house, everything that
goes down the toilet, and down the sink, it goes down into your tank like this. So basically if
you want to consider it this, this is a settling tank. That's all that the septic system does is
settle out all of the solids. So all of the solids are going to break down and float down into the
bottom of the tank. And they're going to create your sludge. Now your sludge has a bunch of bacteria and
things that break it down over time. And the bacteria and enzymes eat away at the sludge.
That's what they like to do. Everything else is considered gray water or effluent. That effluent is basically just,
you know, all of the water that you extract including your urine. It's here in effluent.
Now this gray water fills up the remainder of your tank. So, your tank only gets as high as it can
to the outlet pipe. So, in essence this tank stays 100% full. Every time you flush the toilet
or put more water into it, as the level goes up, it goes on out the outlet baffle, and goes out
into your leach field. So, a lot of people call it a drain field. A leach field, what it is is a
series of maybe corrugated pipes, every company is different, but a grid of pipes that basically your
water will literally just flow out these pipes. And then it drains down through the ground and
is filtered by the ground. So, you really don't have any of that sludge going out of here
because it is way above where the sludge is at. So, another reason why it has a chamber here,
some systems don't have a chamber. Some systems do have a chamber. That chamber allows the sludge
to stay in just this section. And then some of the other fluids that might, or the other solids, that might
make it over, they end up over here. So you have two sections here. Basically one to
hold your sludge, and then the other one just to take care of that excess. The scum on top
is that filmy layer of stuff that just floats. So, you'll have stuff, and oil, all kinds of things that
you put down the sink. You might have, you know, when you get a bucket of oil, or a bucket water, and
you have an oil level, or oil layer on top, and it looks foggy, and you can't see through it,
that's kind of like your scum layer. So when we go outside, I'll show you exactly what the scum layer it looks like.
And if you have recently used the facilities, you might see some solids sitting on top,
waiting to sink down, or waiting to break down, until they sink down into your sludge. So that's exactly how that works.
Your tank is always, you know, 100% full to that outlet. Now, it might be that
you're just trying to learn a little bit about this, or you might have a problem right now.
So think about it this way, if you're putting too much water into the tank, and it overflows and saturates
your drain field, then it could in essence flood to the point where it comes back in the house.
Kind of like if you watched Meet the Parents, and Jinx flushed the toilet and it stayed running all night,
well that's what it did was, it flooded that drain field, and then that water,
that ground became all saturated, and then it literally filled up the septic tank to where it flooded the
backyard before the wedding the next day. So, if Jinx flushed your toilet, and it ran all night,
and you backed up your septic system, you might have an issue. If you have a clog anywhere here,
or your sludge builds up too far, your sludge then goes out through your drain field. And then you
have a BioMat problem, or something like that. You don't want your sludge going out the outlet pipe
because then it clogs up all of these little holes where your effluent is supposed to drain out of.
So think of it like that. If you allow your tank to fill up too much with sludge, then we have an issue.
So, a lot of people ask how often should I pump my septic system? This is an answer that is
not answerable, when it comes to duration of time. It is not based on any amount of time.
It is dependent completely upon your household and completely upon the ecosystem that is created in this tank.
The correct answer is that once your sludge becomes more than 25% of your
overall water level. So your water level is the entirety of your tank. Remember the water fills
up only a certain point, where it goes out the outlet? Your sludge can only take up 25% of that
before it starts becoming an issue. Now a lot of professionals say 25% to 33%. I've even heard some say 35%.
If you're around the 35% mark, you might have an issue. You want to make sure you
get that pumped out. Now some things to keep this maintained are stuff like enzyme packs,
and stuff like that. Let me show you. All right, so sometimes I have liquid bacteria that
I like to use, but Zep makes an awesome product called Septic Defense. These are little enzyme packets.
So, I'm not going to open them and touch them with my hands. It's something that you want to use...
you know, what? I'll wash my hands directly after. I'm going to show you exactly what these look like.
And you shouldn't get anything on you. But I don't like to touch anything without
having gloves on because these are enzymes. This is bacteria. You touch your eyes and you get the crap...
and you don't want to. So, these are little enzyme packets. You drop them in the toilet.
Let them dissolve. And this puts enzymes into your tank that allow your sludge to break down faster.
A good preventative maintenance solution for you to make sure that, you know, you're taking
care of it, you're maintaining that amount of sludge that you want that's healthy and not unhealthy.
All right, I've washed my hands. I like to take precautions and all that stuff because you
never know what could have broken open and then you have bacteria and stuff on your hands.
Just keep gloves on or wash your hands immediately thereafter. Don't touch anything. So, that's just
one of the precautions that I take. I think I've explained this well enough that I'd like to just go outside.
Let's show you my septic system and a couple things to look at.
All right guys, so I just lied to you.
It was a great, awesome Saturday here, but now we've got storms rolling in over my back here,
or over my head. So what we need to do is hurry up and make this video happen.
So we're outside. I have both of my inspection covers here. I've painted them black. So what this is is one inlet
and one outlet. It should be placed right over the baffle. So you'll take off the cover and
you'll look down, right on the inlet baffle or the outlet. So, I'm going to take them off and show you guys what it looks like.
Okay, so this is the inlet baffle side of your tank.
So, I know I didn't explain this in the video, but this is basically a cross member that is
right underneath the hole, the inspection hole. So about a foot down the water goes underneath
this whole thing. So here's my inlet pipe coming out from the house. You can see the sludge,
some stuff that has not broken down and fallen down in the tank. You can see over here that most of
it has fallen down and just a couple things are on the surface. This is an inlet side of the tank.
So directly below this is where all of our sludge sits. And we look down here and there's
our outlet here. So let's open up the outlet side. I'll show you what the outlet side looks like.
All right, so this is our outlet side. Okay, see, you can see that water is even clearer over here
because this is the effluent that's coming out. So as you can see, well I just threw some rocks
in there, but as you can see right here, whoop! Look right here the effluent is right at the level of where
the pipe comes out of the tank. So you can see that's a little higher then over here
where my inlet pipe comes in. See how that is above the water level? And this side is
6" to 10" inches lower. So, your tank will always stay right there at the outlet level.
All right guys, so now we're going to make a sludge stick. This is an extremely cheap option for you if you do not
want to buy one of the expensive core sticks or Sludge Pros or whatever they're called.
I've seen some that are like $75 bucks. I'll roll in a picture of one here. If you want to get all fancy
with it and buy a new one go ahead. But I'm using a cheap option with some cheesecloth. So I've got
some cheesecloth. We're going to wrap around a piece of IMC conduit. I've got a 10 foot stick.
So what we're going to do is, we're going to wrap that around the conduit. And then that will give us
the staining from the sludge on the bottom of the stick and then up the shaft.
We'll see where our water line is. So we'll measure our overall water line which would give us that 100%.
And then we're going to measure the distance of that sludge at the bottom and make
sure we're under 25%. Hopefully we are, but this is my annual check. So, if I need it pumped,
then I need it pumped. And, you know, we'll call the man and get him out here with the sucker truck
and suck it all out. And he can have all of my waste. So, all right, let's go ahead and make this sludge stick.
{music playing}
All right guys, two things I've learned from doing this sludge stick like this is you want to wrap
that cheesecloth a little loose. You want to be able to let that sludge and some of
the effluent move through the cheesecloth in order to saturate it. So, if you wrap it
too tight you kind of pull it back and you get really a blurry line. So, I've also kept
the tails on my zip ties because when you pull it out of the doo-doo, you want to be
able to clip it with your diagonal cutters. And then we have a bag here that we're going to
lay out on the ground. And I'm going to stand the stick up in the bag. You open your trash bag.
You open the mouth of it up. You set it there and then you take your
thing from the end and you just slide it off the conduit. So, it's literally that easy.
{music playing}
All right guys, so just so you can see this better, I set this over here. Okay, so I hope you can see
that well in the camera here. You can see your effluent here on your pipe gets it all wet
up to this point right here. And then here is my sludge layer. I'm going to go ahead and
call it about right there. You can see how it's darker down through here. I'd say it stops about right here.
So you're looking at about the 6" mark. Something like that. One of the main
reasons I keep cheap tape measures around, just like that. So okay, we'll call it the...we'll call it 7"
to be safe. Now I'm going to go ahead and lay this down next to the entire length here.
All right, and the entire length is right about 47". Okay, so let's call it 48".
Let's just make it easy, 48". So 6" of sludge in a 48" tank. You can always, you know,
document that 48" for later because that is the amount there. But 6" is definitely under 25%.
I don't need to worry about pumping this tank this year.
All right guys, I hope you enjoyed the video. I'm going to keep my gloves on
because I'm about to take the cheesecloth off of the pole
and get it put in the trash can. So, I hope you guys enjoyed the video. I hope you learned something today.
The cheesecloth on a piece of pipe is definitely a cheaper option. You probably have like
$2 or $3 into it versus a $75 or $80 tool. So, I hope you guys enjoyed the video.
I hope you learned a lot. I hope to see you click subscribe. I did a lot of hope in there.
And as always, if you're a subscriber and you're watching these videos, I definitely thank you for
coming around the channel, and keep coming around. I'll try to continue to bring awesome content.
I hope you guys liked it. Give me a thumbs up. Or I hope you give me a thumbs down. Whatever you're into!
The sun is starting to glare now. And as always, enjoy your Saturday. We'll see you guys in the next video.