Ask Lemmy

We bought our house three years ago and everything seemed fine with the septic system. The inspection report said it was "functional but aging" which we thought was no big deal. Fast forward to last spring and we started noticing a few things that we completely ignored at first.

The grass over the drain field was greener and growing faster than the rest of the yard. We actually thought that was a good thing. Then we started getting a faint smell near the back of the house after heavy rain, nothing terrible just a slight sewage odor that would go away after a day or two. We figured it was normal for an older system. Then one morning after a week of rain the whole back section of the yard was soggy and spongy to walk on, and there was grey water pooling near where the drain field ends.

Turns out the drain field had been slowly failing for probably over a year and all those "minor" signs were the system screaming for help. The septic tank itself was fine but the soil around the drain field had become completely saturated and could no longer absorb anything. We had to get the whole drain field replaced which was not cheap. Looking back the signs were all there and if we had caught it earlier we could have probably saved a lot of money by just doing maintenance and partial repairs instead of a full replacement. The guy who did the work told us that most homeowners ignore the early warnings because they don't know what to look for.

So for anyone with a septic system what warning signs did you miss or catch early? And for those who had to replace or repair theirs what was the process like and how much did it end up costing? Would love to hear other people's experiences so nobody else makes the same mistakes we did.