Signs of a Failing Tank

Depression in the ground over a septic tank leads cautious pumper to uncover a potentially deadly situation

Pumper averts a dangerous situation

Comment:

Yesterday I went to pump a septic tank in the country. Pulling into the driveway, I noticed the inspection ports/tank was about 10 feet from the driveway. The customer had placed landscape rock on top and around the tank area. Coming closer to the tank, I noticed a 6- to 8-inch depression around the center of the tank. My first thought was, “That doesn’t look right,’’ thinking perhaps the tank had collapsed in the center. The customer said the tank was only five years old and noticed the depression about a year ago.

After scraping away the rock in the center, I came to the landscape material that the customer put over the dirt to keep the weeds from coming through the rock. I took my shovel and cut through the material. I couldn't believe what I saw next. I was looking straight into the septic tank. There was a 24-inch plastic riser about 16 inches high, but no lid on the riser and no lid on the plastic septic tank. The customer and her two boys were watching me uncover the tank. All I could think about was those two boys walking over the top of that tank and falling through the material and into the tank. They would have drowned for sure.

After pumping out the tank and about 12 inches of mud, I found the lids on the bottom of the tank. Before leaving the site, I found a temporary cover for the tank so nothing could fall in, informing the customer as to what should be done. Moral of the story: Be careful and alert! You may save someone’s life, including your own.

Answers:

Good catch; good thing you were on your toes. That could have been a horrible way to go. Imagine falling in, and having the landscape fabric falling on top of you with all the dirt. It would be like trying to get out of a swimming pool after the cover fell in with you. I thought the purpose of making the access covers round was to ensure that the covers could not fall through no matter how you positioned them. Did the weight of the dirt cause the covers to bend and eventually fall in? In the coming months I will be replacing my system, anyone have a preference concerning concrete versus plastic septic tanks?

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It wouldn’t even be like that. The methane gas would knock you out in about three seconds, then you would drown in sewage. That’s even worse. People really don’t think cesspools can kill. Go online, you’ll see.

If they were not buried so deep and had free flow of air to circulate, there might be a fighting chance to survive a fall into a cesspool. I would not bet on it. Block cesspools just cave in without warning. If you are on the top, I wish you the best. The blocks will crush you to death.

Recently, a guy cutting grass on a commercial lawn mower was crushed to death. The weight of the mower broke the cover of the buried cesspool, and in he fell. The machine crushed him to death. His head was above the level of the waste in the cesspool. He did not drown. The owner of the home did not know a cesspool was there.

I stopped installing cesspools and only install advanced treatment systems. They don’t cave in, almost take care of themselves and are way more environmentally friendly.

I’d much rather have a concrete tank. I’ve run into too many plastic tanks that the lids are warped due to tank collapse. Maybe it was the installer’s fault for not filling the tank as they backfilled, but they sure are a pain to get the lids back on again. In 20 years of pumping tanks, I have seen very few concrete tanks fail and a couple of those were due to earthquake damage.

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Concrete tanks can fail also. We just had two cave in within the last month. One was at an older home with a tank out in the middle of the yard and the entire top caved in. The second one was a newer home and the tank was close to the driveway. It’s possible someone drove over it. We need to stay on our toes; you never know what’s next.

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I recently dug a tank up to repair a baffle and found that the lid was cracked and it was caving in. There was a depression around the riser and a corresponding depression on the lid. The top of the tank was about 30 inches down, and in this depression, all the grass was dead. I did a little research and the short story is, the methane gas killed it. Maybe this is common knowledge, but I didn’t know it. Dead grass can be a sign of tank failure. I am glad I took plenty of photos of the jobsite.

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Plush grass can be a sign of tank failure, too. The excess sewage seeping in to the ground can encourage the growth of grass, making some areas of the lawn especially green and fresh looking, and in fact, that’s where the cesspool is sitting. So dead or growing, the cesspool is there.



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