Anyway to make septic system work in clay ground without having a mound.?
When it rains hard the system will not flush down. I have a perimeter drain but that don't help.
Public Comments
- make sure the curtain drain is not blocked and can flow freely. Also the curtain drain should not have dirt on top of it. Or it might not be deep enough. If you are in clay you should have had whats called a shallow placements system. That's were there is about 6" of black dirt put on top of the field, If this is done correctly you should never even notice it. One more thing that it might be is rain is running in the tank. To fix this you will have to dig up the lids and seal them, and dig up the tanks inlet and reseal it.
- Put a sand filtration sytem on the back end of your septic.
- if leech lines work properly with plenty of fall should never be a proplem cause leech lines will run out to a ditch or field
- Depending on the length and construction of your leech lines, you may have to dig them out, dig deeper, install about six inches of 1" rock gravel, then reinstall all. The gravel will take the leech, distribute it evenly, and allow it time to soak into the clay underneath it. Even clay is porous and will take moisture, but certainly less timely than a more porous bedding.
- your system is too small and probably not designed correctly. Short of doing it right (ie starting all over again), about all you can do is to divert the surface runoff away from the system and make sure the perimeter drains are actually doing what they're supposed to do. The problem with clay is that its just too tight and tends to hold water and seal up easily with the organic matter from the septic tank. If your system is old, forget about quick fixes...its probably shot and needs to be replaced. A system over a clayey soil is usually 3 times the size of a system over sandy soils...depending on the type of clay, that ratio could approach 4 or 5 times. You can add a pretreatment system between the tank and the final disposal so if it breaks out it won't stink as badly...but if the system is old it will continue to break out and drain slowly. Be prepared to replace that old system somewhere else. Now, you might be able to add ferric chloride to the distribution system (after the tank) to try and increase the permeability of the clay, but that stuff ain't cheap and it would be an experiment at best (and maybe against the law in your neck of the woods).
