In the Ground

How about a quick update on the Septic system?  Yeah, yeah, I know it's not interesting but remember this blog is a record for my reference as much as it is for you so you will need to tolerate the boring bits.

The short story: we are officially owners of a Travis County and Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) approved septic system.  They made the final burial last week - that is, they spread 12" of top soil over the septic drainage field, and covered the storage tanks.  And I, for one, hope to never see them again.  I ran out there with Alex and Gavin to spread some grass seed over the new dirt to get some erosion control going.  Which in this drought is like sprinkling grass seed in the Sahara and hoping for a lush lawn.  If you have any magic beans I'll trade a cow for them.

Here are the 2 tanks.  Don't ask me how they work.  As far as I can tell, "stuff" goes into one of them and goes through some changes, then moves over to the other tank to simmer a while and then it gets pumped up to the drainage field.  I like to think of it as a mysterious metamorphosis not unlike a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.  But without all the beauty and actual mystery.  Let's move on.

 Here are the pipes heading up to the drainage field.  The larger white one appears to be a clean-out.

 The three images above are of the drainage field.  Kinda large, huh?  With a foot of dirt in place over this we plan to put it to good use.  It will ultimately have a nice green lawn over it and we'll put a volleyball net across it.  Photos below are with dirt.

When the septic installer turned on the main water line to load the septic system for inspection he discovered a problem.  It looks like we had a casualty from the winter freezes.  This valve was cracked and began barfing water all over the place when opened.  Just another problem...

This is pretty much how I felt when I had to call the plumber to come fix the line:

C'est la vie.  Valve is replaced and all is fine.  For now!  Thanks for stopping buy.