Anybody know about septic systems?
I've been having some septic problems, and I did get a recommendation for a septic contractor and he came out to take a look at it, but I could tell that diagnosing problems wasn't really his cup of tea. He can put in a new system, and obviously knows how they work, but I don't know who to turn to to help exhaust all of the options before replacing the system. I don't think he's really set up to help investigate all the potential problems (scoping, possibly?).
About a month ago I saw some effluent squirting out of the high point, and a couple of days later from one of the stand pipes in the drainage field. The septic tank is not full. I started reading up on it, and it sounds like my drain field is failing. The septic contractor came out, pulled off the covers for the manifolds, and we saw that there are (8) zones, and (2) of them were turned off. He turned off the (2) wettest looking zones, and turned on the (2) that were closed, and basically said "well hopefully that buys you some good time, but if it keeps happening you can play musical chairs with the valves, but if it doesn't work any more call me and we'll start talking about drain field replacement."
That did seem to work for a month, but yesterday my wife did a bunch of laundry and told me that she saw it squirting out of the pipe at the high point again. Crap.
So my entire property slopes down from west to east. The septic tank is on the lower portion of the property. I understand that when the tank becomes full to a certain point, it pumps it up to the high point on the higher end of the property, which is basically a couple of manifolds, and a pipe straight out of the ground, and then the effluent runs down from the manifolds by gravity into the 8 drain field sections.
I also understand if you see effluent coming up out of the pipes in the drainfield, it's basically not taking any more water so it has failed. But what I don't understand is how water can ever come out of the high point pipe, without first spraying out of all of the drain field pipes. The high point is highest, so as long as the high point is highest it should never spray water. Water should go everywhere but out of the high point.
If I go out into the drain field and pull off the caps, I can see a couple of them with a little bit of water at the bottom, one of them has water half way up the pipe, and at least 4 of them are bone dry. Based on my understanding of plumbing/gravity, they should all have the same amount of water in them, and they should all be filling up before anything hits the high point pipe (and theoretically, it should never come out of the high point pipe).
I'm wondering if I've got some broken pipes or something before they reach the drainfields. It's almost like some of the drainfield sections aren't even getting water, and maybe a couple of the sections are completely full, but the water has no where else to go except get forced out of the high point by the pressure of the pumping. But even then, even if the only drainfield sections that are full can't take any more water, they should be spraying water, not the high point.
It seems like if I've got a complete drainfield failure, they'd all be full of water when I look down the pipes, and they'd all be spraying water when the pump turns on and gravity kicks in.
Am I correct in assuming something else might be going on here than just a complete drain field failure? If so, got a recommendation on who to contact to try to figure it out?
