Proverbial Happy Pig

Phew, as you can imagine the flurry of joking surrounding this topic of the day! We have lived here for 13 years and never had the septic tank pumped... we were not sure where it was, although we had a general idea. It seemed to be one of those tasks that weighed on the mind, yet the seasons and years slipped away. Last year we knew people who's system failed in January - no fun!

I finally called (about as late in the year as possible for NH) and the owner of this company came a week ago. Super nice guy and extremely helpful. He answered all our questions and was kind enough to change his schedule to work us in. We tried the search the ground with a rod method, which would have worked fine if we had more time; but since time was an issue ( Friday afternoon before a significant predicted snowstorm ) we resorted to using a locator gizmo! it was really neat, a little tracking device that flushes down the toilet, it send out a signal that can be picked up by a receiver. Kind of like a radio collar used to monitor wild animals, although less exciting. The man pointed to a spot where we needed to dig, and left to get his truck. Good deal, I trimmed back the pricker bushes growing rampant in that area and my DH dug the hole. It wasn't too bad as the clever person who installed it had covered it over with sandy soil (MUCH) easier digging than the rest of our property!

the lid of the septic tank
the guy told us we could something else there to mark the spot and
have less to dig next time - we put a metal barrel there & covered it up

we were all happy that even though
it had never been pumped, it was in
working order, and there were no problems
we were lucky!  

It was recommended that he return every 3-4
years to keep things in good working order for the
size of our tank & number of people in our home

I was elated all day, it felt wonderful to get this off our minds and the "to do" list! Haha, I was happier than the proverbial pig! Like many things we put off, it also wasn't as difficult as anticipated, nor as expensive as anticipated. It was a great step in my quest to get control and order back in my life. Thankfully we got the job done just before the onset of winter, this morning it is a balmy 8 below zero at my house and we got 8" of snow on Monday!