What if I am having problems with my leach field?

Symptoms of trouble:

1. toilets won’t flush, no where for the water to go down
2. wet on top of the leach field
3. water standing in inspection or vent pipe from leach field
4. water or sewage backing up in the house

How do I know if this is a leach field problem or a drainage problem?

You can call your septic company or if you are able, handy, check the level of liquid in your tank. Using your wife’s favorite shovel, pry up the tank lid or lids. The level of the tank should be down where the inlet comes in from the house or on the outlet where the effluent leaves the tank for the leach field. This is about 10 – 12 inches down from the top of the tank. If the level is normal, you have a clogged line from the house to the tank. If this level is up to the lid, or overflowing you have an obstructed line to the leach field or a problem with the drainage in the leach field.

Problems with leach fields are from many different reasons.

1. age of leach field
2. engineering or installation problems
3. not pumping tank often enough, so that solids build up in the tank and restrict the room
4. compaction problems from parking cars, livestock on top of lateral lines
5. Spring run off of water can flood leach fields. If you are on a septic system and your leach field is not draining the way it should, you can replace the leach field if you have room on your property or, you could do a Aeratech, teralift. A process with a machine that punches a probe down in the ground 6 ft., then a compressor injects air and polystyrene beads. This fractures the ground and the beads opening up paths for the water to leach back in to the ground. We have good results with a teralift.

Another process is a flow recovery process, done with special formulated bacteria, called a Bio-remediation.

We have had great results with that process. The tank is pumped and the specially formulated bacteria are then put in the leach field. It eats up the bio mat that has accumulated due to

1. Sludge migrating out to the field
2. Excessive use caused by too much water
   www.propump.com Or request a booklet from us.

Columbia Sanitary has been in the septic business since 1959. We pump the greater Denver Area, West to the divide, South to Fairplay, and North to Allens Park above Boulder, and East to Eastern Arapaho and Adams counties. We get a lot of referrals from customers. Our company is licensed by County, EPA, and Colorado State Health Department. We are licensed, insured & bonded. We are a distributor of Hydro Action advanced Treatment systems and an authorized service provider for Norweco, Advantex, Nibbler Jr, & other advanced treatment systems.

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