The Expert Podcast

So before you do construction on a new property the most important thing is to figure out how your waste and septic is going to be handled if you're in an area that has a sewer system where it's done by the municipality then you can just hook up to the sewer but in areas where you have to create a septic it's very important to create that septic plan in advance of the layout of the house because if you lay out the house in a way that doesn't allow space for a septic system you're going to be out of luck so we're going to talk about septic plans how to put together a site plan for a property and how to make sure that that's done in advance in some cases it might be good to put in the septic first even before you lay out the house because the septic dictates everything else about the property.

And you see on the screen here this is an example of a typical simple septic system and we'll look at some more complicated ones that have different types of flows and different types of architecture but the basic septic system is something like this and you're going to have first outside of the house a septic tank and that has a purpose and we'll talk about that and then you're going to have a drain field that'll have lines where liquid actually seeps into the ground.

The most important thing is your setbacks the septic system has to be a certain distance from the house and it goes by uh jurisdiction most times it's going to be at least five to ten feet sometimes uh farther you're also gonna have setbacks of your drain field from property lines you're gonna have to have setbacks from your drain field from escarpment which is if there's a big hill or a cliff has to be set back from the escarpment the drain lines themselves have to be a certain distance from each other usually five or ten feet so as an example if you need three drain lines for the right length and they have to be 10 feet apart you're going to need to have 30 feet of space from your property line so you have to figure that in and you want to make sure that you have enough space for the house it's far enough from a well or from ground water.

So a septic plan is something that a qualified septic installer will put together you know we have that ability uh to create those septic plans and having that coordinated with your architect or your floor plan of your house is important because you can't drive across this so you can't put a driveway over it you can't build on top of it because it has to have evaporation space above it you can't build a deck over the top of it because that's going to defeat the purpose of the evaporation so you want to make sure this is in a place where you're not going to need to walk across you need to drive across build a deck on or too close to your house now you can walk on it and you can plant certain things on it you don't want to plant trees over here you probably don't want to plant a garden because you may need access to it.

The other part is can you get to this drain field with equipment if you need to after the fact when you're building a house you can bring in equipment payloader excavators diggers whatever it is but after the fact if it's blocked in by the house or by other construction you may not want to put a drain field where you can't get access to it most permit requirements also have a repair area requirement meaning that if this fails you have another open area where you can put another drain field.

So what are the requirements of a drain field usually it's done by length of the pipes so if you have a two or three bedroom they're going to be a certain amount of length you need for example a two bedroom might need 160 feet of length well if you have three legs 160 feet you're going to need about 55 feet each so you want to make sure you have 60 feet or so of distance left to right to build this drain field and you can plot that out on your property in addition you're going to need space from the septic tank to the distribution box that splits it out there's also requirement for a certain amount of drop for gravity might be six inches per 50 feet it might be eight inches for this drop from the septic tank all of these distances need to be taken into account.

We recommend that before you even start firming up the details of your house that you plan where your drain field and septic is going to go and you work with a qualified septic installer to give you all your options because a qualified septic installer may be able to create creative methods of putting your drain feel together in your system together so that it gives you more access to your house maybe a better view maybe less excavation labor cost because you don't have to dig as much maybe you have to get as many get rid of roots on trees you want to make sure that the design of your septic is efficient but also valuable to your property so if you want to do something later it doesn't preclude you from building let's say an addition on your house.

So let's take a look at some components of the drain field and also other parts of the septic system the septic tank is the first thing that comes out of the house and the inlet from your drains in your house your sinks your bathrooms all come into the inlet and it goes into this tank some tanks have two sections with a divider some tanks are open and what will happen is any solids or non-liquid items that come in sink to the bottom of the tank in any liquid then flows through and that's what goes out to your drain field and while the liquid is in the tank it also creates a scum layer on the top so that where the outlet picks up from it's doesn't pick up scum it doesn't pick up sludge it picks up water that's more clear once it goes out then it can filter through this system through the different layers of the earth that's on your property to make sure that it's finished treatment and polished before it enters any kind of groundwater that's what a septic system does.

Now there's another way to create these drain lines with a chamber system instead of having pipes you have basically covered troughs that have rocks in the bottom that drain into the soil for treatment right there's another type of system which has a drip tubing and this actually has a pressure in it that pushes water through the tubes basically the same idea it just goes in a circuit where there's a return line that comes back to this other tank that actually has a pump in it so these are just more complicated systems but they do need the same type of layout.

If you have soil that does not have proper drainage you may have to build a mound that has sand and some other components that helps the drainage before it gets into the bottom of the um regular topsoil sometimes soil is too compacted or it's too muddy or it's clay where it's not going to drain properly so you have to build a mound on top of it that helps do this in fact when you are digging these trenches for your drain field you have to dig this when it's dry because the sides of these trenches also have to be loose and crumbly if you dig the trenches when it's raining or rains afterwards and the sides get slick that can create a coating of mud that will dry and prevent the drainage from going into this trench properly.

So designing this septic system is very important to maintain the property value to maintain a good system and also down the road to make sure that this drain field is not going to fail now there will be permits involved so you'll have counties that will inspect all this but or cities in addition to that you want to make it resilient so that it lasts a long time that you don't have to come in and spend another fifteen twenty thousand in ten years to fix something that could have been prevented in the first place.

So designing a septic system is very important you can see our website septicplants.com give you some options on creating that design creating some options you may have two or three options maybe you put the drain field here maybe you put it farther away and you have pros and cons to each one and each one of those options can be combined with your design and site plan where you're going to put your house where you're going to put your driveway where you're going to put other utilities maybe an out building to give you the best possible highest and best use of your property for valuation for appraisal but also long-term resiliency of this septic system that for some people it's out of sight out of mind like it doesn't exist but if it does fail it's a very expensive repair and you want to prevent that from happening with a good quality design for durability but also repair if it does need something in the future.