The Cautionary Tale from Stinky Pinky

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.