Snow and ice, septic issues

Sunday night into Monday morning brought us ice and snow. The temperature on Monday never got to freezing. Because of the hazardous travel conditions I stayed home from work. I tried to work from home. That does not work well for me. With Grandma’s constant talking and Mama looking over my shoulder as I typed emails I was not very productive.

It all turned out for the best because that morning I flushed the toilet in our bathroom and it did not go down. I was able to shut off the water before it overflowed but that was the start of a really bad thing. I plunged the toilet and got nowhere so I went outside to check the cleanout on the sewer line. It was to the point of overflowing.

Thinking it was plugged going into the septic tank I tried to find something to rod it out – with no good coming of it. I told Grandma, Victoria and Mama they could not flush toilets or run water through the sinks until I figured it out. Victoria had just gotten out of the shower and Granma was starting a load of cloths.

Grandpa was over at the barn burning trash – it was a good day for that up to that point. I got his opinion and we decided to dig up the septic tank cleanouts. We had just had the tanks pumped out a few weeks ago. Grandpa knew right where they were located so it was easy to uncover them. That’s when the real problem became apparent. Both tanks were full to overflowing so the problem had to be in the lateral lines, the leach bed, since nothing was draining out of the tanks.

We dug around the tank that the lateral lines should have been coming from for several hours and found nothing. Grandpa got the tractor and tried to dig with it to speed up the process but the ground around the septic tanks was way too soft for us to do any good. We ended up making a huge mess in the yard and gathering a lot of effluent in the holes we had made, but got nowhere.

I had Mama call the people who had cleaned out the tanks for us to have them come back and at least pump the waste out of the tanks to give us room to use our bathrooms but no one was able to come that day or yesterday. Maybe they will make it out this morning to clean the tanks and look into the problem with the lateral lines. Hopefully hid pump truck will not damage the yard too much. It would be hard to tell with the damage we already did to Mama’s beautiful back yard.

I am rapidly adjusting to the idea of another three or four thousand dollars coming out of the savings account to repair the septic system but there is no way we can occupy the house without it. In order to be able to flush the toilets I dipped about 150 gallons of “water: out of the second tank to lower the overall volume enough to take on some of our needed bathroom use. That’s how the house is operating this morning.

Victoria’s closing got postponed due to the weather. Mama and I are waiting to see when it is put on the schedule at the title company. I still have a trip to the panhandle hanging over me as I wait on word that things are lined up for me to do what I need to do when i get there. It is a singularly unpleasant task.

Boy, am I looking forward to that.