Entries Tagged Soil

Many components in a septic system must be stable and dry during construction to protect the component and assure long-term viability. The...

Proper bedding of system components is critical for level installations. In order for the backfill to serve as a solid base for...

Erosion control measures prevent erosion caused by runoff, which is water flowing over land surfaces that wears away soil and rock. Runoff...

Maintaining natural soil structure is critical when installing a soil treatment area for an onsite system. All excavation to the infiltrative surface...

Over the past year, I have had a couple of readers/homeowners in lakeshore areas ask why septic system setbacks and requirements are...

Consistence describes how easy it is to deform or break up the soil. Consistence is used to determine if the soil contains...

Soil color is often used to determine seasonal high water table (SHWT) for system design. The soil treatment area bottom (or infiltrative...

While soil texture describes the percentage of each size class (sand, silt and clay), soil structure is the organization of these individual soil particles...

Soil texture refers to the percent of sand, silt and clay in the soil. Most soil descriptions follow the United States Department...

Washed rock is used as distribution media in soil treatment area, media filters and in interceptor drains. It is obtained from quarries...

Editor’s note: This article features a Septic System Answer Man column that first ran in Pumper magazine nearly a decade ago, in December...

I often receive questions from homeowners about their septic systems. It’s no surprise that they are usually about a specific problem they...

I receive quite a few questions about using soil fill to overcome site limitations. Sometimes these questions come before fill is used, but...

Across the U.S., there are two common approaches to determine how large a soil treatment area, or STA, should be: soil morphology evaluations,...