Septics: Why the Big To-Do About Where Doo-Doo Goes?
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Bill Primavera
If your house is on sewer, you may think that this piece about septic systems has no application to you. But as I understand it, as many as one-third of us within the reach of this newspaper are on septic.
And if you’re not, you may someday fall in love with a house that is, like I did.
As a realtor, just recently, when I started a home search for new clients, my first directive from them was, “Don’t show us anything that isn’t on sewer.” Yet the couple preferred homes with privacy in more remote locations where, more often than not, there are no sewer lines.
As I became more a veteran in the real estate business, I tended to gently nudge clients if I felt it was for their own good. So, in response to that preference, I would ask, “Why not? A septic system is not something to fear.”
The fact that I once owned an 18th century house that still had an abandoned outhouse in the yard when we first visited it should have led me to have some questions about where the doo-doo went. But at the time, as such a young and naive kid who knew little about the way houses work, I never bothered to ask whether it was on septic or sewer. Imagine? Hardly Home Guru-ish.
Once ensconced in that home, we soon noticed that the sinks and showers were draining slowly and that the toilet wasn’t flushing properly. That’s when I realized that we probably had a septic tank that needed to be pumped.
When the service people arrived, my wife and I were at first somewhat startled by the slogan on their lime green t-shirts that said, “Your s–t is our bread and butter!” We laughed, albeit nervously, as city transplants at the time when the film “Deliverance” had just been released.
But after much poking around, the service providers found a wonderfully built septic system. From what they could tell, it probably hadn’t been pumped in a very long time. But once the tank was pumped to remove the sludge on the bottom and the scum from the top, we never had a moment’s problem with it. The only maintenance we did, when we remembered, was to pump it every five years to keep it in top working condition.
Now Westchester County requires that septics be pumped at least once during every five-year period, but one septic expert told me it’s not necessary to pump that often, suggesting that it’s a way for the county to boost tax revenue. But who knows?
The septic tank comes to us courtesy of a French inventor named John Mouras around 1860. The components he established then are still pretty much in effect: The house drain connects to the septic tank where all wastes either settle or float. Heavy solids sink to the bottom where they are broken down by bacteria to form sludge, while the lighter solids rise to the surface as scum. This process allows the wastewater in between to be released to the absorption field.
To show the efficacy of a good septic system, I have been involved with the sale of a Frank Lloyd Wright-tutored home built in 1962 and, when it came time to check the septic tank, we couldn’t find it. The testing service came over and we poked and prodded for a long time, working on an old survey, and it was no place to be found.
So we called in a snaking company that had to place a snake with a camera down the waste pipe. It was shoved through quite a distance to the tank, and it was found in a very unlikely location, next to a giant tree that certainly wasn’t there 50 years ago. When the lid was lifted, maybe for the first time in a quarter-century, the tank was clean with a minimum of sludge and practically no scum on top. When things work, they work.
Bill Primavera is a residential and commercial realtor associated with William Raveis Realty, as well as a publicist and journalist writing regularly as The Home Guru. For questions about home maintenance or to buy or sell a home, he can be e-mailed at williamjprimavera@gmail.com or called directly at 914-522-2076.
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