Septic tank maintenance

March 26th, 2013:

How to locate your drain field

This article will discuss how to locate your drain filed. They have always drained you of your much conserved energy every summer vacation. Your parents seemed to make sure that you learned how to do everything at home when you were still with them. It started during grade school and high school days. Every single summer whether you stayed at home or with your grandparents, it was still the same. You had to do everything around the house. It was never an excuse if you had other things planned like going out with friends. You just had to do your chores.

You must admit that it did help you when you left to live on your own during college. For years, you had no difficulty in getting things done for yourself because you were trained well at a young age. Then the time when you had your own house was at hand. One of the biggest chores that you had to do was to take care of your septic system. To do that, your septic expert said that you had to know how to locate your drain field.

It is very important for you to know where your drain field is. Most homeowners  are not aware of their drain field’s location so they end up causing damage to it by building things, driving, planting woody plants, and raising livestock over it The drain field is very prone to failure so you have to check for septic odors and sogginess.

Finding your drain field involves the following tasks:

  1. You should look for the record drawing of your septic system. This is the diagram that shows where your septic system’s components are. This can be downloaded online or copied from the one that gave the permit to have your septic system built.
  2. If it’s summer, try not to water your lawn for a while. Eventually, you will be seeing green grass stripes. This indicated the location of the drain field’s lateral lines.
  3. If it’s winter, the area above the drain field is the first area that will lose its frost.
  4. If your septic expert installed clean-out ports or ports for inspection, these are pipes that have white caps and are cut-off near the surface. These are parts of the septic system that you can take a peek through to check the level of effluent inside the system.
  5. Probe the areas that lead away from your septic tank. As much as possible, don’t use wrecking bars or crow bars that could damage the tank and other components.
  6. Look for depressions that are parallel to each other. These will tell you the location of the trenches in the drain field.
  7. Under your house is the location of the sewer pipes. It is installed 10 feet inside the foundation of your home.
  8. Get a professional to use echo-locators.

If you find the drain field, then you can control the condition of your septic system as a whole. The drain field is the last phase of wastewater treatment in your home. If blockage or damage happens here surely there will be a malfunction or worse, failure of the system.

It was the first time that you had your own house built. It was important for you to keep it functioning well like a well-oiled machine. Your septic expert told you that you had to make sure that you adhere to the pumping out and treatment schedules so that you can avoid thousands of dollars worth in repairs or replacement.

To prevent the failure of your drain field, you should start changing to bacteria- and environment-friendly household cleaners; using drains, sinks, and toilets; and avoiding the use of harsh chemicals. You even considered redirecting the rain gutter and transferring the gazebo that your architect designed. Your septic expert even asked you is the plants you wanted over the drain field were more important that your system. So you decided to keep your plants away from your drain field. Every small effort helped and it became much easier when you found your drain field.