Transcription
So, in part one of this series, I purchased three, um, plastic drums with removable tops. I drilled for the influent and the effluent and, with heat and this plywood clamp, I flattened out the surfaces so that the uh, flange adapters I planned on using would fit uh, properly. So I installed the flange adapters with caulking and stainless steel screws, and then I made some baffles out of some 5-gallon bucket plastic material and installed those on the inside of the drums. So, at that point, the uh, septic tanks were basically complete, and I brought them to the country, did a little bit of surveying, dug a big hole, and put them in a hole, connected them together. So that's basically it for the septic tanks. They, they have no moving parts; they're real simple. Um, oh, I also poured some concrete slabs to put on top of them because the uh, the plastic lids, although they're waterproof, I'm hoping, and can deal with the harsh chemicals in the septic tank, they have no strength at all. So I put the concrete slabs on top to hold the weight of the soil and lawnmowers and tractors and stuff. So, at this point, the septic tanks are installed. Um, I loosely backfilled them; I didn't compact, and that, that will show up later on. We got rain, and the dirt all caved in, but that's part of the plan.
In part two, or the second video, we dealt with the effluent side. I dug down to tie into the uh, discharge off of the third septic tank, and I did something a little bit different here. I put a T. Now this is all solvent weld without the hole, so this is watertight pipe; it's not incased in gravel yet. I put a T, and I put a vertical, so that I can actually look down this vertical at any time I want and see what's going on. I should see when somebody runs water; I should see relatively clear water coming through this pipe into the leech field. It shouldn't be chocolate brown. If the, if the water's lumpy or really brown, I got a problem, and I need to deal with it; otherwise, this thing could kind of run forever. So I put in this T in this vertical, and I laid one little length of um, solid pipe and backfilled that with dirt, cuz that doesn't need gravel. And then, for some reason, I thought it was smart to pre-dig most of the excavation. Um, my, my instrument, my uh, instrument was not working, so I couldn't dig to grade, but I just thought I'd dig out the bulk of it; thought that would save me some time, and in fact, it did not, because it rained for like almost 2 weeks after I did this, and then the hole filled up with water and made it much messier and much yuckier, but we muddled through.
So, came back, got my instrument fixed; I was able to set my elevations. I did put the bottom on a slope, a little bit, like 1 1/2 in per 10 ft. I don't know why; it just seemed like it would better distribute the water throughout the length. So I was going to put uh, 80 ft of perforated pipe; I have room for 80 ft of ditch. Uh, when I went to the depot, they only had six joints. I said, "Good enough." So we put in 60 ft of um, ditch. I laid out the uh, black um, plastic, which is not waterproof, or it's filter cloth, so this lets water come into the trench or out of the trench, but it will not let the silt migrate and fill up all the voids in the gravel, which is what you don't want to happen. So, put that on the bottom and the sides, put in my foot plus of stone, laid the pipe, which has holes every like 6 in, and then put a little more gravel on top of the pipe, put some more fabric on top of that, and backfilled it and uh, called it good. Well, the end of the pipe has a cap on it, and we called it good until my little demon started second-guessing me, and that'll be the start of the third video.
Yesterday, I laid my 60 ft of uh, pipe in the ground with the gravel bed, and I was talking about maybe adding a little more because this soil is so dense, I'm not sure how much water it will absorb, or, or what the time frame would be. Um, I didn't do it yesterday; I got it all sealed up, and it's a good thing, cuz it rained most of the night. So now it's a, it's not terrible, but it's a sticky mess, so we're going to leave it be today. And I kind of thought I would tie in my sewer coming out from under my bathroom through the system, cuz it's good to go, but it's supposed to rain all day, and it's already sprinkling a little bit, so we're going to have to wait for another day. I don't know whether I have enough footage to put out a video on what I've got done so far; we'll have to see when I get home. But anyway, we're ready for the tie-in, and I might or might not add some more linear foot of a perforated pipe, but I got to decide, cuz I have this gravel leftover, so it's now or never; either, either I'm going to add onto my leech field, or I'm going to put this gravel on the road, which I've been doing, but I still have enough. I think the best thing for me to do right now is to do nothing and sit on it for a week, and I come back when the sun's shining and decide. Anyway, spruced up my drive a little bit with little gravel here and there, and uh, it's kind of sprinkling; I think I'm going to go in the woods and try to map out my uh, my south trail, which I have halfway mapped out, but not totally. Enough; I'm going to get, get soaking wet from sweat anyway, so the rain doesn't bother me.
So what's going on here? I'm digging it back up. Yes, I'm going to go ahead and add the two more joints on it. I don't think I need them for the way I use the cabin, but my time on Earth here is pretty limited, and I don't know what's going to happen in the future. So the track hoe's sitting here; I got the stone; it'd be kind of silly to uh, shut all this down and, and make the uh, gravel bed just a little small for somebody in the future. So I'm going to go ahead and add my two joints and uh, then backfill it and try to compact this stuff a little better than it was. I got a couple of backfill areas where I had three or four where I didn't have it sealed off well or compacted well, and the water has washed down in there, and I believe it has filled my gravel bed with water. Um, I think this is a temporary phenomenon, and I think once this clay gets sealed well, it won't happen again. For right now, I got a feeling we have uh, 500 gallons of water down there. Okay, so my hole was a good guess; that's the end of the pipe where the shovel is, so I can dig deeper on this end and get some of this water out here. It's rained every day for the last, I don't know, two weeks; everything is super saturated. So to get two full joints of pipe in the hole from that end, from that cap, I need to come to about right here, and so I need to back up, and I, I'm, there's a ditch back here; this is the one I dug a year ago, so I'm going to pull forward and grab some dirt and fill in the ditch temporarily, and then I can back up and get my two full joints, and at the end of that, and at the end of the day, I'll clean out the ditch. So I'm digging down here to try to um, uncover the bottom piece of fabric, of filter fabric, and it remained incredibly intact. Now the top piece I shredded, but the bottom piece was still down there; just had to straighten it out. Well, now doesn't that look better all of a sudden? We got a little gravel in the hole; got it kind of safed up, but what I don't have is pipe; I don't have any pipe. I'm going to have to run to Lowe's in uh, Mome, Mississippi, to get two pieces of perforated pipe and a vertical pipe, which will not be perforated, per perforated, excuse me. Okay, the perforated pipe is in the hole; I didn't get a full 20 ft; I had to cut it, but that's okay. And again, I'm going to put a riser on the end just so I can see what's going on down there; I'm really curious. And if this riser ends up with 3 ft of water in it continuously, I got an issue. If it's sort of semi-dry, I'm okay, but uh, if I don't put the riser, I'll never know until it refuses to work, and that'll be some Thanksgiving day when we have 20 people over here for sure. So uh, yeah, looking good; I need to bring some more gravel, spread it around, put the black stuff on top, and uh, backfill it, and this time I'm going to try to compact it a little more. I was kind of hesitant to compact it too much, and it, that's what caused the thing to fill up with water because I had the water went through the dirt. So yeah, all good; onward.
Okay, gravel has been placed and graded, and now the upper sheet of filter fabric is installed, and it's time to backfill, and I wish my material was a little bit drier; it's going to be a mess, but I don't have a choice; I need to backfill and crown it and keep the rain from coming in like it did uh, the last few days. So the septic tanks are set, and now we need to hook up the piping, influent and effluent. Um, I'm not going to start the effluent, which would be the uh, the gravel beds, until I get my material here on site, cuz I don't want to dig a hole and leave it open and get a bunch of rain and turn into a slot hole. So, but I can lay one joint of pipe from the influent side of the septic tank towards where I'm going to go. I don't want to run it all the way; cuz I'm not ready to tie it in; I want to leave myself some flexibility. So I got two basically full joints of pipe; I got a 45 and I got a 22 1/2, and, and I'm going to dig it up and lay it on the ground and see which one looks better. Um, kind of like to end up, you know, like, like right here somewhere, so it will be easier to uh, do the tie-in, period, when we're ready.
Yeah, okay, so I need to move the water tank now. Moving the water tank is tricky; if I pick it up too much, all the water runs to the back, and I'll get launched over the back, although it doesn't have that much water in it right now. If I put the front end down too low, all the water goes to the front, and then I can't pick it up anymore. I'm going to try to do it by hand just to keep from getting a tractor in here one more time. Okay, not so bad; let me go get the tractor and bring it over here. Okay, I'm thinking uh, the 22 1/2 is going to be better, so uh, yeah, I'm going to paint a line with spray paint and uh, dig a little trench. I can dig some with a shovel; it doesn't have to be, I don't have to overdo it with a track hoe; try to minimize collateral damage here. Let's uh, I'm going to get my paint; I'm going to paint a line, and we're going to dig a good bit of it with the track hoe. I may be the only builder kind of guy left in this country that did not know this, but there's a new type of Schedule 40 PVC pipe. And see what it says here: Not for pressure, which is really weird, cuz Schedule 40 in my mind has always been pressure pipe, which means it has to be super strong, cuz uh, 4-in pipe with 100 PSI water pressure in it, that's huge; it's got to be really strong, and it was really expensive; a joint was like 40 something bucks, but a joint of this stuff was 15. So how do they do it? Well, apparently they put a skin on the exterior that's pretty hard; they put a skin on the inside that's pretty hard; between the two, they fill it up with old socks and underwear and stuff; I don't know what's in the middle, but uh, it's not rated for pressure, but it will handle uh, DWV, drain waste vent, and then you can use all the Schedule 40 fittings, of which there's a whole lot more, save money; I like it; I like it. So I'm a new customer for this uh, what do they call this? Cox, Cox cellular core PVC DWV. See, it's not pressure pipe; it's drain waste vent pipe, which is not meant for pressure, and it's got some sort of, code in it stamped: Not for pressure. I like it. All right, we have good footage; we have good slope. I'm going to clean it up and glue that fitting and backfill, and I'll mark this in with a big board because that way you can dig it back up without breaking the pipe. I always do that; like I mark the far end with a big board. Yep, all right, and clean it up and glue it; no sense in filming that.
So the pipe is in, and it's glued, and uh, we're backfilling obviously. Um, this is a little bit tricky because dealing with 3-in Schedule 40; they don't have an unlimited amount of fittings to make these weird angles work together, and two, it needs to be on a constant slope, cuz this is a gravity line. So uh, yeah, I've been kind of taking my time here trying to figure out. I'm going to get up underneath the house with the normal fittings, which is, which is basically quarter bends and eighth bends. When I first started working on the cabin, the deer kind of moved away, but apparently they've come back, cuz this is like 4 ft from the back wall of the cabin; big old deer print. Working my way back toward the cabin; this will be the influent side. I dug a ditch for the next piece of pipe, and I have a 45, which will turn and go to the commode drop, which is right there, but instead of coming at a 45, it's going to come straight down. So I'm pretty confident I can cut and glue this end; I can cut and fit this end, but I probably won't glue it, so it'll give us a little wiggle room. But the 2-in pipe right there's got to go; that's my uh, pipe coming from the gutter. Um, that doesn't matter; it doesn't have to be a certain fit; it's basically a big giant 6-ft-tall P-trap. So yeah, I'm going to cut this one; I'm going to glue it, get it the right slope, throw some fill back in there, and then I don't know if I'm gonna be brave enough to cut that one. Yeah, I guess I can, I can level down with a 4-ft level, 2-ft level, and cut that one, but I got to move this 2-in pipe. So this pipe is in; it's glued on that end; the 45 is not glued; I'm not going to glue it until we finish, in case I need to wiggle a little bit, but I'm going to go ahead and backfill this part and dig up this 2-in pipe and see what I got to do to relocate it. It looks like the big pipe can go under it, but it can't. I'll put the level on it. All right, so I'm going to cut that 2-in right there, and there's two screws holding, right here, holding this to the board; there's two screws holding this to the board; I'm going to take them out and just set this whole thing to the side for now until I finish the uh, 3-in drain. The only thing that'll happen is if it rains, I'll just lose the little bit of water from this roof, and that low roof will be the end of the world. I don't know if you can see the water coming out of that downspout; that should be going into my water tank, but I have a disconnect. Anyway, this is a minor part of my water plan, and the major part's working. Rain much longer will be subtly full again. So I'm just going to cut it; if I can; it's kind of hard to get to, and move it out of the way, and like I thought, it's full of water, cuz this is just a big jump P-trap. Go get my screw gun and unscrew those screws and just get this out of the way. I didn't have a very good glue joint there; it came apart; maybe it never was glued. So from the level to the edge of the sewer pipe coming out of the commode is 11 in down here; I only got 7; that means I need to go about 4 more inches in where that dirt is really hard, but it's going well.
Another week has gone by, and it's been a dry week, and the coming week's supposed to be dry too. So um, today's the day I'm going to cut all this old plumbing loose; I'm going to drag the tank out, and I'm going to make the tie-in, um, at least the commode tie-in; the rest of them can drain under the house for a week; it won't hurt anything. But I think I have close to enough fittings to finish everything; it's really hard to guess at that. Um, but what I'm going to do now is uh, turn on the murator pump and get the hose and put it in that hole in the top of the tank and try to halfway rinse out the tank before I drag it [Music] [Music] out. I got a little box fan blowing on me, which helped a lot with uh, the heat and the odor and the mosquitoes. So we got mosquitoes underneath this house; they drive me crazy. Okay, so the drain from the toilet will drop straight down because this, I plumbed with DWV pipe, drain waste vent, cuz I had it, and it doesn't glue onto the floor flange; it's just basically like a big funnel; it's being held up by this block of wood. So this one will come right out; this one I'm going to have to cut probably right here, just long enough to put a coupling on it. Uh, the drain for the little bathtub is another funnel kind of thing; we got a little pipe uh, dropping into a big pipe, so I'll probably won't even have to cut that one, but the drain from the kitchen sink I'll have to cut that one, and then I should be able to drag this old tank out of here as soon as I undo the pump. All right, this is probably going to be nasty; not terrible; it's stuck; let me get a shovel. Okay, oh God, how heavy this thing is; I don't know how much sludge is in it; it's coming, and I got that fairly expensive float switch in there that I never hooked up to anything; let me just save it. [Applause] So this, this is what's left on the inside; not horrendous; it's less solids than I thought there would be. I'm going to drag it out of the way, put the top back on it, and uh, deal with this another day, and going to scoop some of that contaminated mud out of the way, put my cardboard down, and get under there and start working. Well, actually, if you remember, this fitting is not glued, and now it's under the mud, so I need to clean this out while they dig that a little deeper, and then we can go to town. Let me get this nasty tank out of here. All right, well, I got the old pipe pulled out the hole, well, the pipe pulled out the hole, and I got the hole dug out a lot more; give me some flexibility. Um, this is a 3-in coming from the toilet flange, and I got some nice cardboard that I brought from home, which makes a big difference. So that's the toilet flange, and it's designed so that 3-in rigid can glue to the inside and 4-in rigid can glue to the outside, but what I had was 4-in DWV, so it didn't really fit, so it was just on the outside like a big foam, and it did fine, except it had to be propped up. So um, yeah, I think we're looking pretty good here. So I need to cut uh, this 4-in, I mean this 3-in, so I need to cut this 3-in right about here to make up this fitting and probably have to cut this a little shorter. Now this, this goes in there; now this is going to go in there, and this is what all the other drains are going to be hooked to, um, and I'm probably going to have to glue it and then pick up on this bottom to make up the joint, so that's going to be challenging by myself; I might have to do some thinking; make sure I'm ready before I slather glue all over it, but uh, yeah, we're doing, looking good here; looking good. Need to mark this and cut it first.
All right, we're looking good; we have dry footage, and we have slope, and we have enough pieces and parts to go this far, so I think I'm going to glue this one, this one; this 90 is already glued, and then glue, and then I'll glue this T, and I'll leave that one unglued for last, and that'll give me something to pry up on; I can pry up on this T to make sure I get that joint together before the glue sets. It's going to be uh, upper 90s this afternoon; trying to get as much of this done right now while I'm in the shade; got my little fan that helps out a little. So I put this pipe together and uh, made sure it was going to line up underneath the potty, and I marked the fittings with a Sharpie, so now that I'm gluing them and putting them back, I'm trying to get them right on a Sharpie mark, cuz there is some adjustment with these things, and I don't want to get way off. All right, that's one [Music], that's two; all glued; everything seems to be okay. Um, apparently I forgot my camera bag, so there is no spare battery, so no more video, but uh, except when I'm holding my phone. I'm going to go ahead and backfill this run right here and try to get some dirt under it because it's just hanging right now from the toilet flange; if I step on it, it won't be good. So we're going to try to find some dry dirt and pack it in there real good.
Well, you probably didn't know it, but I've been gone for a little while; I was kind of straightening out this dirt here so I could scoop up some dry material, put it in the bucket to backfill with. I got some good stuff; let's uh, let's do some backfilling. I think I'm through with this uh, shovel; I could get rid of it or put it back in the truck or whatever. Well, I'm short on my pipe fittings: one 2-in T and a 2-in cleanout adapter, so that's not too bad. So this is coming from the kitchen sink, and there's a P-trap up front, so I don't need a P-trap, so I have the 1 1/2 to 2-in bushing and a 2-in 90; going to cut it; it's got to go further up, and then this is coming from the little bathtub, and it's just a slip fitting, cuz it has a little bitty thing, so we'll have, have a 2-in pipe from here to here, and then let me get out. Okay, so then coming back this way there'll be another 2-in T, is what I don't have, and we'll 90 up to this 1 1/2 and have a bushing here, and then we're going to need a T right here to 90 up to catch that, and that's the one I don't have, and in the end I'll put some kind of cleanout plug. So, in the end, I'll put some kind of cleanout plug. Window hunter, cut pipe. Yeah, so not so bad; might have to go to the uh, go to the store; I think this is a pretty good hardware store in the little city next door; it should have a 2-in T; that's pretty basic. I think I'm ready to come out from under here; this is the kitchen sink is hooked up; the little 3-ft bathtub is hooked up, and the lavatory is hooked up with the existing piping, and now I just need to hook this to that. Yeah, smart like I am, I went and washed my…
Hands a little while ago in the kitchen sink, so now this is all wet. But yeah, I can come out done under here. So the siphon for the rainwater collection is in now. This was probably contaminated because it was open-ended, and we had a couple of flooding rains, and I'm sure there was bacteria around this uh, septic tank, my old storage tank. So I'm going to dump a bunch of Clorox in there, and since it's a big, big p-trap, a big U, it'll stay in there for a while. It's not supposed to rain for a long time, so we're going to backfill. And all of this is piped up, and that sink drain may be leaning a little bit the wrong way, but it's okay. And the next drop of water that goes down the drain is going into the septy tank. Hallelujah, and we're all cleaned up. I got rid of the brick, so now I can get in here with the mo—well, as soon as I move that pile without having to use a string trimmer. That's all cleaned up. Took its first flush this morning; seems to be okay for it. And I kind of got this grad out as best as I can. There are wet spots and dry spots, which makes it a challenge, but it's probably as smooth as it was before I started. Now, it took us about a year to get the grass to grow here; the soil is so poor. So I guess it'll be another year before this gets green, but uh, it will get green. And I'm going to put a riser like that one on this end. You don't see that very often uh, on a leech—leech area, but it is aerobic bacteria down there, so it just seems like they can't help but—but help getting some more air down there, especially when it's as deep as mine is in this old, fat clay. I don't know why more people don't do this. I guess people don't want pipe sticking up in their yards, but it doesn't matter here. So I'm going to get another pipe and raise it up.
Okay, let me start by saying I have the little tro—that's ours—and we have the little green tractor; that's ours. So that's a cost that is not in here. The only thing I charged in that relation was a 5-gallon bucket of diesel. Um, the labor was really cheap; there was no cost for that. But other than that, the three drums were 45 bucks, the toilet flanges were 38 bucks, the caul was 10, stainless steel screws were special order; they were about 20, and the concrete and rebar was about 31 bucks. So that's 134 bucks for the septic tanks themselves. Ignore this yellow block; it should have been somewhere else. And then for the leech field, the filter fabric was 165 from Home Depot, 15 tons of clean stone was 600 bucks, which is kind of pricey, but that's what it was. And then here's the cost for the diesel for my equipment, um, and then all the little piping tickets; I just added them all together, uh, I didn't try to separate them; they came out to $549. So the total I spent was $1,564, which is a little more than I was going to guess, but uh, I guess most of that is that stone; that stone is really expensive. Anyway, I'm sure it would have cost a lot more if we had somebody else do it. So, uh, hope you enjoy this little series. Thanks for watching.