Yes I get a lot of questions...but I find it rewarding when I can help people walk through the issues they face when building/buying/selling a home with a septic system. It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it.
FAQ - Inherited house with cesspool
I inherited a house from my father last year that has a cesspool. We just received a notice from the health department saying we need a new septic system before we can do anything with the property, even if we want to sell it. But the current system is working fine. Why should we be forced to do this? Lloyd and Linda C.
Cesspools have been used extensively around the world. But they are designed basically for disposal only, not treatment because they do not effectively remove the contaminates present in wastewater. A cesspool is a deep pit dug in the yard with a cover put over it and the sewage was dumped into it.
Problem is, these pits are often dug right down into the underground water supplies and the sewage is pulled right back into the house through the well. There are still a fair number of homes around the country that you can flush a red dye down the toilet and 20 minutes later it will becoming out of the kitchen faucet. Real nasty deal, huh.
Also, the deeper you go in soil the less oxygen there is, the less oxygen there is the less aerobic bacteria there are and the less aerobic bacteria there are the less treatment takes place.
It wasn’t until the 1960’s that anyone started looking at septic systems as actually performing treatment, not just disposal.
Research illustrated that the shallower you are in the soil the more oxygen there is...the more oxygen there is the more aerobic bacteria there are...the more aerobic bacteria there are the more aerobic bacteria there is to "eat' the parasites and viruses present in sewage.
Today’s systems are comprised of a tank to allow for settling and storage of the solids and a shallow drainfield to disperse this now relatively clear liquid over a large area of soil.
As the effluent migrates through the soil, the aerobic bacteria do the job on the bad boys and chemical/mechanical processes take the clean up even further.
Also the shallower the drainfield is the more evaporation will take place so not all of the water going through the system has to percolate down through the soil. Bonus round...Jim