A large proportion of septic systems in America today are the standard gravity-fed system, but if you live in a site with clay or silt, sandy soil, a high water table, or other difficult features, your septic system may have been adapted to meet those specific needs. As a homeowner, you'll want to learn all you can about the type of septic system you have and what it does.
There are actually quite a few alternate types of septic systems in use for such tricky situations. Here are five reasons why a nonstandard septic system may have been installed on your property.
1. Processing Waste Without Much Topsoil
While a standard septic system needs about three feet of topsoil between the surface and any bedrock or the water table, alternate systems can often function with a much shallower depth. For example, a mound system uses a mound to raise the level of the surface, artificially deepening the available soil.
If you have hardly any topsoil, you may need an even more specialized system such as a biofilter or an aerobic treatment unit. These may only require a foot or so of soil.
2. Solving the Problem of Going Against Gravity
Traditional standard septic systems are gravity-fed. This means that the drainfield has to be set slightly downhill of the septic tank (or buried slightly deeper if in level ground). If your setup requires you to pump effluent uphill to the drainfield, a pressurized system may be just what your site needs.
The pressurized type of system uses a pump to force effluent out of the septic tank and down the leach lines to the drainfield.
3. Disinfecting or Prefiltering to Prevent Groundwater Contamination
For a traditional septic system, percolation rate is extremely important. That's the rate at which water moves through the topsoil surrounding the leach field. A percolation test, performed before a septic installation, checks to see that water doesn't run through too quickly or too slowly. If the water drains too slowly, the system won't be able to handle enough wastewater.
If the water drains too quickly, that means the topsoil isn't filtering out the contaminants reliably enough. An alternate system with a prefilter or a disinfecting feature (using UV light or chlorine) can help in this situation by removing or neutralizing the contaminants, which otherwise might get into the groundwater and contaminate your well.
4. Adding an Aerobic Element When Topsoil Is Dense
If the percolation test shows that the soil is too dense and doesn't drain quickly enough, sometimes extra leach lines can help to distribute the water over a larger area. But in other cases, an aerobic treatment system can help by processing with the aerobic bacteria that are unlikely to thrive in super-dense soil.
An alternative system with a sand mound or a sand prefilter may also be an option in this scenario.
5. Reducing Amount of Land Needed
For a traditional septic system, you need not only the area used to bury the tank but also a large area for the leach lines and another unused area of land for a second leach field in case the first fails.
If you don't have all this extra land, an alternative type of system can be very helpful. For example, an aerobic treatment system may halve the amount of land you need.
These are just a few of the ways in which a pressurized or alternative septic treatment system can solve wastewater treatment problems in difficult situations.
For more information on the types of septic systems available and which one you might have, feel free to give American Portable Toilets a call or contact us via our website. We offer inspections, repairs, tank pumping, and other septic services .