Being a homeowner can be a tough thing sometimes. What is even more tough is when you start dealing with septic systems. They plug up, they refused to drain, the tank gets full.... and all sorts of wonderful challenging things happen. We recently went through a stint where our septic wasn't doing well. We decided the tank was full and wanted to have it pumped. This was after my husband had gotten intimately involved with snaking out the line from the house to the tank... then from the tank into what he thought was the house line. At the same time, since we live on a corner property, some jackass had probably gotten drunk, drove through our pasture, right through our drainfield and dukes of hazzard up and over our septic and out our driveway - potentially causing a whole host of issues. So, after not being able to fix it ourselves, we figured we'd call a pro and have them pump it so we could at least see what the issue was.

I asked around to my friends at work (who all live in the boonies and deal with this topic often) and got a recommendation for a company that was local. They came out friday, and wow... I didn't know I was signing up for a college course in poo 101. First off, our tank didn't need to be pumped. That was great news because its horribly expensive. We have, it seems 3-5 years left to leave deposits before it becomes necessary. Secondly, the sneaky thing had three chambers... baffled... off either side of the main tank we weren't aware of. So... in essence, we pulled the drain field side of it, and that was functioning perfectly. We pulled the house side, and whallah... after having problems with it since around July, we found the issue. That baffled chamber was completely stuffed and compacted with material. Everything we were flushing was going into it, or trying, and not being able to get into the main tank itself.

The septic guy, a 31 year old homeboy with an absolute love of septic systems sat there and lectured us on TP, how not to stuff wads and wads of it down the septic (which we haven't... no idea where this mess came from), and how to routinely clean out these baffles. We also learned you can throw a whole bag of dogfood into the tank (the middle section) and the rich protein feeds the the bacteria and kicks them into overdrive to eat more pooo faster. I had no idea. Truth be told it was fascinating. I learned from him that products like Rid-X and other additive enzymes were extremely damaging for systems like ours and for most systems out there, as well as powdered detergent and a whole host of things you flush like toilet bowl cleaner. I learned that vegans were evil and shouldn't have septic systems cause their waste won't break down at all unless you add protein like dogfood monthly, while conversely heavy steak eaters had the best septics cause that is how mankind was supposed to feed. I bombarded him with questions, and he answered them all patiently and carefully, including giving us some suggestions on replacing our line from the house to the tank (the one we have is slightly U shaped and should be straight) to get a harder 'whooosh' when we flush. It was a true education in country living... and I was fascinated.

It's neat to realize two people can live in one house with a good sized septic and be there for years and years and years decomposing their own waste without polluting ground water and overburdening public waste stations.

And it also gave me a lesson on how to love your job. Because this guy absolutely LOVED HIS JOB! His job was shitty... literally... and he loved it. He wasn't weird, he wasn't freakish, and he'd just built a new house and had four kids. But he truly enjoyed being out there in the rain talking about poo and how to process it.

Gotta give credit where credit is due.