Finding septic tank

So my mother in law's septic tank backed up, and I have the general idea of where it is, but right now I feel like I'm reenacting the movie Holes with Sigourney Weaver.

I have a tractor with a 6' bucket, but afraid of damaging the tank when I do find it if I use that.

I see where the pipe goes underground in the crawl space, and going straight out from there about 20' from the house. Digging by hand I'm around 2-3' deep in some places, found nothing but rocks.

Wish I had one of those radio locate devices to find the pipe at least

http://m.homedepot.com/p/Bully-Tools...Q&gclsrc=aw.ds


This, time and patience is how we found my uncles. It was further from the house than we expected.

My own septic tank and leech field are 130' out from the house.



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Shouldn't the county should have a drawing of where your tank is?

Is there anywhere that Democrat "vote for me!" signs are sprouting in your yard? If so, I'd start there. If not, try putting in one and see if they multiply. You can always kill them later with a healthy dose of "Common Sense" spray (I find the Traditional formula kills em on contact much better than the new EPA approved "Dialogue" formula. Dialogue formula is mainly just a watered down version of the ill-fated Tolerance formula which came out sometime around the Bush Sr. era.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kwando

Shouldn't the county should have a drawing of where your tank is?

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County offices closed Fridays as a cost saving measure, and of course this happens on a holiday weekend. Once I find the tank, I probably can't even get someone here to pump it.[dig]

Brought the tractor over, still digging

We put our system in approx 12 yrs ago. At that time the county(Morgan) inspector gave us the specs for system and before we buried it came out and took GPS readings on major components and foot print of entire system.

Along with vegetation look for any swells or areas that appear crowned. May need to look from different angles to notice if it has been many years since last activity.

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She finally found the paperwork from the locate done in 2009, it was out further from the house than her mark or what she remembered
Attachment 67002

The rod thing. Except for rocks, but seriously, the rocks shouldn't be there if they excavated for the tank. They should have backfilled with clean dirt. Doesn't mean they did.

Take a step back and look at the area like you hadn't seen it before. It should be slightly mounded and grass or weeds should be slightly taller since you don't compact the dirt over them.

If if you do use the tractor you shouldn't damage it much since you'd hit the concrete rider before you hit the tank.

No risers, but I'll be putting them in. One lid was so stuck it only came out in pieces

Probe rod was useless between clay soil and rocks.... in the future, I'd recommend a locate service, that's what was used in 2009 to find it (radio locate)... and that was my best clue, found it in an hour with that info [facepalm]

You can hire locate companies to do private locates. When I did work doing utility locating, we did them all the time. Electric, septic, sprinkler systems, etc. This is assuming the pipes were metal, or they buried a tracer wire with them.

You should paint "Nemo" on the tank before you bury it again.

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Originally Posted by Irving

You should paint "Nemo" on the tank before you bury it again.

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Or Dory? Lol

Yeah, the next generation might not even remember Nemo by then.

Looks tasty

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ccf5cZQUMAE3WoX.jpg

Some if not most sewer cameras have transmitter sondes built in if they have a locator to go with it. Not free, but saves time. Mine can tell you the depth too once it's located.

pipe line camera company that I used to work for had a flushable locater that you simply tied a string to, flushed it, then pulled it back with the string after doing the locate. It would only work for shallow non-metallic pipes.
Of course, this doesn't help much after the fact.