Waaaaay back in 2008 when we bought our little house in the
sticks, one of the things required of the seller was to have the septic tank
pumped. In all the finalizing I
mentioned to our realtor that it had not been done. He assured me it had been. I said it had not…and waved my hand towards
the yard with unbroken grass. Nowhere
had it been dug up to access the clean-out.
Alrighty then…
He contacted the seller’s realtor, who then contacted the
septic company. Their story: “Opps, we must have pumped at the wrong house…”
That should have been a warning.
We happened to be on the property when they finally showed
up. The kid who had been sent out could
not find the tank. He probed & said
he found it, and then dug down for quite a while. Hot, tired and making no progress, he called
ol’ dad to bring out the back hoe.
It was at this point we had to leave for another
engagement. We told him to mark where
the pump out lid was so we’d not have to go thru this again.
When we came back out a day or two later, the ground was all
dug up and there was a large rock in the middle of the mess.
Fast forward to September 2013.
Time to have it pumped again.
The company who had been out here in ’08 is no longer in
business. So I called a well-known local
company to do the job.
I told the crew that was sent out where the lid was
located. They probed and probed and probed
without finding it. My eyebrows started
going up…
So they next went to the cleanout in the garage and ran a sewer
snake with a transmitter down the line.
The other man had a receiver and followed it along, saying when it
dropped off is when it landed in the tank.
Beep…beep…beep…..silence.
IN our driveway!
About 20 feet from where the first people claimed it was!!! They
had ripped us off! Apparently they dug
around a little bit and since no one was there to watch, they just left without
doing anything!
Another bit of bad news – it was buried deep. And that changed it from a clean out to a dig
out…and quadrupled the price.
But this isn’t something you can ignore, so let the digging
begin.
Three feet down and the pumping could begin.
Ended up the tank was almost at critical level…nearly full
and totally nasty.
A ‘collar’ was added so we wouldn’t have to dig it out
again.
So a word of caution to anyone (especially first time septic
tank home owners)… be on premise when the tank is pumped!! Our inexperience cost us hundreds of dollars.
Way back when we almost bought a house located in a semi-rural area that had a septic tank and well. After some thought we decided we were city people who needed sewers and city-supplied water.
ReplyDelete