Summer Begins this Week! Part 2

 It's a week past the start of summer, but I've been really busy so I haven't had any time to write about all the renovations we have done. If pictures of old poop bother you stop reading now.

One of our biggest problems has been solved. The septic issues are no more. It took us going to seven different septic professionals before we finally had a solution. Am I now an expert on septic systems? Yes I am. I was completely ready to take the septic exam if required.

Found the second tank! Getting it pumped out the day before fixing everything!

So what happened? Well, I phoned one of the major septic system sellers, Waterloo Biofilters, in Ottawa and they gave me the names of three trusted septic system installers and my husband called one of them.  Dan O' Grady Equipment and he very nicely came out and paid our site a visit. He started digging around our leach field and said hey you might have a tank out here because your pumping station is beside the house. Then he suggested calling someone who  repairs septic systems since ours still seem to be working. In the meantime, we started digging around our leach field. We didn't find a second tank but what we did find was gray PVC piping that was bone dry.

So we called Justin from Proactive Septic Solutions and he was wonderful. He solved all our problems. It took him until early June to come to our site because he's so busy. But he spent the afternoon digging around our property. He found our main tank, he found our septic lines to the leach field which were not were we expected and he found the original grey well. Our system is old, but completely functional. It looks like the previous owner didn't pump out the first septic tank, but only pumped out the pumping station. The old tank was completely full of crusty waste. Our system had a failsafe which was a gravity line to the old grey well which is why our system didn't back up into the house ( If there wasn't a failsafe the previous owners would have had to clean up the mess.) The lines to the leach field actually wrap around the far side of the barn not the side closest to the house. So Justin suggested getting the old tank pumped out, putting proper risers on the old septic tank and the pumping tank, and getting a new pump with an alarm as the old one that was sparking (it wasn't working). We got it all installed just before the start of summer so this is a huge relief to have the septic fully functional. Justin said that it looked like the leach field had been dry for many years so we don't need to replace it because all of the biomass (the black gunk that jams up your field) had died.

The pump was dead! Now we have a whole pile of old concrete to get rid of!

All new lids!

We did buy a bottle of sparking wine to celebrate!