Septic Possibly Backing Up Into Basement....life Stinks.

Flikka

Hi guys,

I came home today to find nasties erupting from the drain in the basement. We live in the country and have a septic bed and well. The drain in the furnace room has a hose from the air conditioner and the water softener in it. Right now half the furnace room is quite wet with bits of nasty lookin stuff in it. Doesn't stink though so that's good. We've lived here over 10 years and have never had to call a plumber for an emergency......as a matter of fact I think in all my 21 years of home owning I have never called one. We did manage to get a hold of someone who is coming tomorrow morning first thing. Till then he recommended no showers, laundry or dish doing and very little flushing of the toilet.

thom

check to make sure your water softener isn't stuck on recharge. It could run forever, just filling your septic tank.

It's a code violation to run the hose into the drain. There must be an air gap if the discharge dumps into the sewer. If there were an airgap, you would likely have heard the water running.

A neighbor had this problem, though the discharge was into the ground. They figured out they had a problem when they got an $1,800 water bill for one month.

smellslike$tome

Salt softeners are murder on drainage systems. I had a lady last year that paid somewhere around 6k for I think it was a Rainsoft system. The yahoo's that installed it (who were obviously not qualified) had drilled about a 1/2" hole in a 2" pvc kitchen sink line, glued in some sort of abs looking adapter and attached the discharge line from the softener to it with a hose clamp. The brine discharge entered the ks drain directly below the sink and ran about 75' to tie into the rest of the drainage system. It was as if her ks line had cement in it. It was a bad situation.

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Alan Mesmer

If your floor drain is connected to your septic system It could be 20 different things causing your issue. Have you ever had your tanks pumped out? It is a good idea to pump your septic tanks at the minimum of 3 years. If you don't do proper maintaince your floating cake inside your septic tank may be able to clog your outlet pipe going to your leaching system. It is also a good idea to inspect the baffles in your tanks when you pump to make sure that they are in place and doing their job as well. Tank baffles keep the cake from cloging your outlet pipes and your leach lines. You could have roots in a line or a broken line or even just a good old clogged septic line. When they pump your tank give it a flush and see if you have good unrestricted flow to the tank. Next look at the tank outlet to the leaching area. Is the water coming back into the tank from the outlet pipe in a large quantity as they are pumping your tank down? If so, your leach field may be saturated or may have failed. Let us know.
Good luck.
Alan

Flikka

We had a good ole fashioned blocked tank. Just waiting to see if our insurance company is going to cover it........well not waiting.....moving ahead. Had the plumber in, then as the tank was exposed called in the pumper to have it cleaned out and now the Sewage Extractor company is here......Sewage Extractor......I learned something new today. Most of what was in that room isn't important. Not the best way to do the spring cleaning but it's getting done.......and not by me.

While our water softener is hooked up to the drain it hasn't worked in years. And if you think that is bad when we first moved here the pump for the pool was in the basement. Yup that first year we back washed right into the drain. Then we got to thinking worse case scenarios........