I'm sure some familiar faces will respond here
Anyway, I have a septic saga. I don't want to rehash all the other various reasons for all of what is happening, so let's look past that and take the following info as fact for what we have to comment on.
My basement probably shouldn't have a bathroom. The depth of the tank and the slope of the basement bathroom drain line isn't enough. During times of heavy rain, the basement toilet won't flush. This happens just 3 to 4 times per year. The next day - everything is perfect. So I have a perfectly working basement toilet 360 days per year.
The fields? New as of 2008 and inspected. Yes - I know this is not all ideal - yet it works.
On top - I have new information. When the previous owner decided to finish the basement, I confirmed that the contractor had concerns about the slope of the basement bathroom drain line to the main. The previous owner decided to risk it. That was 8 years ago.
The previous owner had the exact issues I had. 360 days of perfectly working system.
So can I really complain? Given that history - I feel there is nothing really wrong with my system. Not ideal - but not broken.
If we had no basement bathroom, I highly doubt we'd ever know we had issues during heavy rain.
So my question....
The basement bathroom is near level with the inlet of the septic tank. Only slight downhill flow. To improve this, I figure I might use a pump just the same as if my tank was 10 feet higher than the bathroom. So somehow, I'd want to kill the existing basement bathroom drain, and re-route it into a pump of some sort. From there - it would be over to PVC drains through the basement ceiling (now about 10 feet higher than the tank) - then down to meet the main drain line.
Probably a crazy expense. But the point is that when my system "slows" or backs up - at least there is all the vacancy in the drain pipes in the walls to hold stuff until it finally starts to purge. We've had an inch of standing water in the backyard due to torrential rainfall. It passes in a day, and the basement toilet works fine again for the rest of the year (minus a day or two).
Given that we now have 8 years of history with this, I'm thinking it is what it is.
So if I can get the basement waste "up and over" with a pump- the weigh of the waste/water in the pipes would be enough to use gravity to push it towards the tank, and it would never backup since within a day, the system would right itself and purge everything off anyway.
Crazy talk, or make sense?
