Inspections & Problems
Something is wrong and nobody has looked in the tank yet.
There are no photographs on this site yet. Rather than fill it with stock pictures of somebody else’s work, each frame below says what photograph belongs in it.
Finding and Uncovering the Tank
You cannot service a tank nobody can find.
Locating the tank and the lids on a property where no drawing survives, which is most properties.
Most properties have no idea where their tank is, and that is normal.
Septic systems get installed, covered over and forgotten. Lawns grow over the lids, owners change, the drawing that was made at the time is in a file nobody has, and twenty years later there is nothing on the surface to say a 1,000 gallon concrete box is four feet away from where somebody is about to plant a tree.
Finding it is a real part of the job rather than a preamble to it. There are a handful of clues that narrow it down fast: which wall the waste line leaves the house through, where the ground settles slightly differently, where the grass is a different color in dry weather, and on some properties a cleanout cap that nobody recognized.
The thing worth knowing is that this is a problem you only have to solve once. Fitting risers while the tank is open turns every future visit from a dig into lifting a cap.
How a buried tank gets found
- The line out of the house sets the direction and the rough depth
- Any permit or as-built record for the property, where one exists
- Surface signs: settlement, a different grass color, a dry or green strip
- Probing on the line, which finds concrete without opening the ground
- The turf cut cleanly and lifted in one piece so the lawn goes back
From no idea to an open lid
Done in this order, the amount of ground that has to be opened is small.
- 01Start insideWhere the waste line leaves the house decides which side the tank is on, and roughly how deep it starts. A basement wall penetration is the single most useful clue on the property.
- 02Read the groundA tank and its field change how the ground above them behaves. Slight settlement over a lid, a strip of grass that stays green longer, a patch that dries out first: none of them is proof and together they usually narrow it to a few feet.
- 03Probe rather than digA probe finds the top of a concrete tank through the soil without opening anything. This is the step that keeps a search from becoming a series of holes.
- 04Open just the accessOnly the ground over the lids comes up, with the turf cut and set aside in one piece rather than broken up, so it can go back.
- 05Fit risers, if it is worth itA riser brings the access to ground level with a cap on it. The dig happens once and then never again, which on a tank that is pumped every few years pays for itself in the labor it stops.
System Inspections
Looking in the tank is how you find out.
Levels, baffles, filter and outlet looked at directly, and a plain account of what is actually wrong.
Everything useful about a septic system is inside the tank.
From the surface a system that is about to fail and a system with ten good years left look exactly the same. There is a lawn, and under the lawn there is a lid. Every piece of information that would tell you which one you are standing on is under that lid, and it takes minutes to read once it is off.
Three numbers do most of the work: how deep the sludge is on the floor, how thick the crust is on top, and where the liquid level sits relative to the outlet. Liquid above the outlet means water is not leaving the tank, and water not leaving the tank is the clearest signal there is that the problem is downstream of it.
After that it is a matter of what is still physically there. Baffles rot. Outlet tees break off and fall in. Filters pack solid. Lids crack. All of it is cheap to put right while the tank is open and expensive as the cause of something else later.
What gets looked at
- Sludge depth on the floor and scum thickness on top
- Liquid level against the outlet, which says whether water is leaving
- The inlet baffle, and whether the line into the tank is running clear
- The outlet baffle or tee, which is what keeps solids out of the field
- The effluent filter, where there is one
- The lids, the risers and the condition of the tank itself
The three layers, and what each one tells you
A working tank separates into three. Which one is growing, and how fast, is the whole report.
Grease, fats, soap and anything that floats, crusted together at the liquid line. It is supposed to be there: it is the lid that keeps air off the liquid below. A very thick crust means a lot of grease is arriving, and if it reaches down to the outlet it starts leaving with the water.
Drain Field Checks
The field is where a septic system actually fails.
Whether the ground is still taking water, or whether the tank is backing up because the field stopped.
The tank is not where septic systems die.
A concrete tank is a box in the ground with no moving parts, and it will outlive the people who installed it. The drain field is a bed of stone and perforated pipe whose entire job is to let water soak away into the soil, and it has a working life, because what stops it is not wear but clogging.
What clogs it is a layer that forms where the stone meets the soil. It builds up from the solids and grease in whatever reaches the field, and the more of that arrives the faster it forms. Once it is thick enough, water can no longer pass through into the ground, and everything behind it backs up.
The useful thing about checking the field is that it changes the question. A tank that fills up again within days of a pump-out is not a tank problem, and pumping it again does not address anything. Knowing that early is the difference between a repair and a replacement.
What a field check looks at
- Whether the liquid in the tank sits above the outlet
- How quickly the tank refills after it has been emptied
- The ground over the field: soft spots, standing water, smell
- Grass over the trenches, which gives it away in dry weather
- The distribution box, where there is one, and whether it runs level
- What is on top of the field, because weight and roots both matter
What the ground is doing
Tick what you have noticed. This counts what you ticked and says what it changes about the visit. It is not a verdict on the field: nothing short of looking can give you that.
Slow Drains & Blockages
One slow drain is a plumbing problem. Every drain is a septic problem.
Telling the two apart before anyone pays to have the wrong one fixed.
Which drain is blocked tells you most of what you need to know.
A house has two separate systems that both show up as a slow drain. There is the pipework inside the house serving each fixture, and there is the one line that carries everything out to the tank. A problem in the first affects one fixture. A problem in the second affects all of them, and usually shows up in the lowest one first.
That distinction decides who should be looking at it, which is worth getting right before anybody pays for a visit. A single slow bathroom sink is not a septic job, and a basement shower backing up when the washing machine drains is not a plumbing job.
In between those is the cleanout: a capped pipe outside, usually near the house wall, which is where the house plumbing effectively ends. A blockage upstream of it and a blockage downstream of it have nothing to do with one another.
How to tell them apart
- One fixture slow, everything else fine: that fixture's own pipework
- Every drain slow at once: the line out, the tank, or the field
- The lowest drain backing up when an upstairs one runs: the line out
- Gurgling from a drain when another one is used: venting, or a partial block
- A toilet that rises and falls on its own: air and water fighting in the line
Where the blockage is, and who fixes it
The same symptom in three different places. The middle column is the one people get wrong.
Inside the house
- One fixture affected and the rest are normal
- Often the trap or the branch serving that fixture
- A plumber's job rather than a septic one
- Easy to mistake for a septic problem if two fixtures share a branch
The line out to the tank
- Everything in the house is affected at once
- Roots, a crushed section or settlement are the usual causes
- Found by opening the cleanout rather than by guessing
- Looks identical from inside the house to a full tank
- Can need the ground opened to put right
The tank or the field
- Everything affected, and often wet ground outside too
- A full tank or a packed filter is the common and cheap end of it
- Answered within minutes of the lid coming off
- The expensive end of it is the field, and that is a bigger job
Solid marks are the case for it, gray marks the cost of it. Both are real; which one wins depends on the property.
Questions
Questions people actually ask.
Finding and Uncovering the Tank
Will the lawn be wrecked?
Not if the turf is cut and lifted rather than dug through, which is how it should be done. What is open is the area over the access rather than the whole tank, and the turf goes back rather than being left as spoil. It will be visible for a few weeks and then it will not.
Can I find it myself before calling?
Looking is free and useful. Find where the waste pipe leaves the house, walk a line out from it, and look for settlement or a strip of grass behaving differently from the rest. Note what you find and say it on the call. Do not open any lid you discover: see the warning on Backups and Overflows, which is not an exaggeration.
Are there records for my property?
Sometimes. Septic permits are held at the county or state level and an older system may have no surviving record at all. It is worth a look before paying anybody to search a lawn, and it is often a dead end for a system installed decades ago.
What are risers, exactly?
A short collar that sits on the tank's access opening and brings it up to ground level, with a lid that sits flush with the lawn. They are plastic, they mow over, and they are the difference between a service visit that starts with a shovel and one that starts with a lid being lifted.
System Inspections
Is this the inspection a house sale needs?
Ask before you book, because that depends on who is allowed to sign it. In Tennessee a real estate transaction inspection is a specific thing and whether this business can provide one is not something this site can state: nothing on record says so either way. What is described on this page is a working look at the system and a plain account of its condition. If a lender or a closing needs a certificate, say so on the call first.
Do you have to pump it to inspect it?
No, and in fact the useful measurements have to be taken before anything is pumped. An empty tank cannot tell you how deep the sludge was. If it turns out to need pumping, that is a decision made once the readings are in.
What if the inspection finds something serious?
You get told what was seen and what it usually means, with the uncertainty included rather than flattened out. Some things are definite from inside the tank: a missing outlet baffle is a missing outlet baffle. Others, particularly anything about the drain field, are an indication rather than a verdict, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.
We are buying the house. What should we ask for?
The age of the system, the size of the tank, when it was last pumped and whether there are any records or permits for it. A seller who has the answers has usually been looking after it. A seller who has none is not necessarily hiding anything, and it does mean nobody knows what state it is in.
Drain Field Checks
The grass over one strip is greener. Is that bad?
On its own, no. A drain field puts water and nutrients into the ground, so grass above the trenches growing better than grass beside them is the system working. It becomes a concern when that ground is also wet underfoot, or when it smells, or when it has appeared recently and did not used to.
The tank was pumped and it was full again in a week. Why?
Either a lot of water is arriving, or very little of it is leaving. The second is the one worth checking, because a tank that refills to above its outlet and stays there is describing a field that is not accepting water. It is also the one case where pumping repeatedly treats the symptom and nothing else.
Can a clogged field be unclogged?
Sometimes, partly, and it depends on what is wrong with it. Resting a field by diverting water off it, or correcting whatever is overloading it, can let a partially clogged bed recover some capacity. A field that has been saturated for years generally does not come back. Nobody can tell you which one yours is without looking at it.
Does it matter what is on top of the field?
Yes, more than people expect. A drain field needs to breathe and it needs soil that is not compacted, so vehicles parked on it, a shed or a pool built over it, or heavy equipment driven across it all shorten its life. Tree roots are the other one: they grow toward water and they get into pipe.
Slow Drains & Blockages
Can I use a drain cleaner first?
On a single slow fixture that is a decision about your own plumbing. On a whole house that is draining badly it is not worth it: the blockage is not somewhere a bottle of anything will reach, and what does arrive ends up in the tank, where it does no good at all.
What is a cleanout and where is it?
A capped length of pipe, usually just outside the house on the side the waste line leaves from, sometimes in a basement. It exists so that the line out can be reached without going through the house. Knowing where yours is is genuinely useful. Opening it when the system is backed up is not, because what comes out has nowhere to go.
Everything drains, but slowly, and it has been getting worse for months.
A gradual change across the whole house is the pattern worth taking seriously, because the sudden ones are usually a single blockage and the slow ones are usually capacity. It is the description that most often turns out to be a tank that is long overdue, and it is also what a field slowly clogging looks like. The two are told apart by the levels in the tank.
There is a gurgle but nothing is actually slow.
Gurgling is air being pulled through water somewhere it should not have to be, which can mean a vent problem or a partial blockage that has not become a full one. It is not urgent and it is worth mentioning the next time somebody is on the property.
The rest of the list
Inspections & Problems
Something is wrong and nobody has looked in the tank yet. Call and describe the property, or send the details and ask for someone to come and look at it.