I called the septic guy yesterday, and he said he would be in the area and could come over this morning.
He came a lot earlier than I expected!
While he was here, I spent most of my time distracting kittens, but I couldn’t help but notice he was having issues.
He actually went rifling through the pile of poplars left over from when we cut them to build garden trellises with, 2 years ago, to find one long, straight and strong enough. Something was blocking the opening at the top of the tank, and he couldn’t get the hose into one of the compartments. You can see on the ground behind him, there is a heavy gauge metal wire. That’s his, and he’d tried using that, first.
He was able to get the hose through the opening and start pumping, thankfully! After he was done and packing up, I asked about it, and he said it was pipe. !!
I don’t know how this system looks beyond the very top, where there are openings to each compartment that he pumps through. I’ve tried looking up diagrams for dual compartment septic tanks, but they are all tanks that have two covers. Only one site I found mentioned some dual tanks might have only one, like ours. They also all have a gravity based outlet that would lead to a septic field or some sort of treatment system. Ours has an outlet leading into the pump in the basement, which pumps the effluent all the way out to near the barn, where it is expelled through an above-ground pipe. What I call our “septic field” is basically the area the greywater pours into, not a real septic field.
He didn’t seem particularly concerned about the block; more frustrated because it made his job harder, I think. Still, I’ve passed it on to my brother. Something like this, I have to rely on his knowledge and expertise. I hate to do it at the best of times, but right now, he’s out of the province for Thanksgiving with the grandbabies.
Everything seems to be working fine, though, so this was a bit of a surprise, that’s for sure!
My main concern is that someone is going to have to go down there to check it out. And if it’s something that needs repair, likely an excavator will need to be brought in. That’s a massive expense.
In the 4 summers we have been here, I think our sump pump turned on only a couple of times, in the first two years. Conditions had bee so dry the next two years, the reservoir was pretty much empty. The only times it turned on was when we had to empty the hot water tank completely, to replace it. We partially drain it to shock it hydrogen peroxide every now and then, but not enough drains out to trigger the float.
So when I heard a pump running while in the bathroom during the night – we could hear it nowhere else – I didn’t even recognize it for what it was. When the noise was still going the next time I was in the bathroom, I was flummoxed. At first I thought the sound was actually coming from the space heaters our daughters use upstairs. Sound carries strangely in the house. I thought nothing of it, and went out to do the morning rounds.
Later, I tried to use the hot water in the kitchen, and had issues. I didn’t know my daughter had shocked the tank last night, after I’d gone to bed, so I went to check in the basement.
Which is when I found this.
This is our sump pump set up, which is directly under the bathroom. The pump was running, but there was enough seepage to create that puddle on the floor. The water was not draining out of the reservoir. Thankfully, it wasn’t getting any higher, either, but the pump just kept running.
So back outside I went. The first thing I had to do was dig out the end of the drain hose, which runs into the old kitchen garden.
It was under a drift, of course.
There was no sign water had drained out the end, and it was completely unclogged.
Then I dug out the area in front of where the drain pipe comes through the basement wall. Once that was free, I could pull the hose from where it ran along the side of the house and the sun room, all the way out, then run it down the access path to to the wall.
From the flexibility of the house, I could determine that the first couple of feet from the wall had ice in it. The rest seemed pretty clear. Yes, I could hear the crunching of ice in places, but no blockages. I didn’t want to bend it too much, though, so as not to crack the frozen plastic.
The next thing to do was set up an extension cord and a hair drier.
Since I was going to have a cord running through the doors, this meant Butterscotch and Nosencrantz couldn’t stay in the sun room. I was able to get Nosencrantz into the old kitchen, but one of my daughters had to catch Butterscotch and get her into the old kitchen.
Well, we were talking about bringing them in earlier. My daughter had through Saffron and Turmeric would be going to the vet yesterday, not next week. So we talked about bringing them in tonight.
Nosencrantz is currently isolated with me in my bedroom/office right now. Butterscotch is still hiding somewhere in the old kitchen.
I had to unplug the power bar for the heated water bowl and ceramic heater bulb in the sun room, then run the cord across the outside wall.
The next while was spent warming up the hose, pausing to try and break things up inside very now and then (using the snow shovel to keep the hair dryer off the snow!). Meanwhile, a daughter was in the basement with one of the space heaters, trying to warm up the hose where it came through the wall, as it seemed to be blocked straight through.
Things did start to drip. Which should have melted ice from the inside, so that the water could finally get pumped through, but it never got more than a drip.
After doing as much as I could outside, I joined my daughter in the basement and simply used a bucket to drain the reservoir. It’s not all that deep, but deep enough that I ended up having to attach wire to the handle of the bucket, then used the handle of a broom to push it down and fill it with water until I could pull it up with the wire. Then I could drain it into the old laundry sink. My daughter, meanwhile, was stuck standing there, holding a space heater and aiming it at the pipe.
Once we could be sure the pump wouldn’t turn back on again, we stopped. That the water didn’t drain at all in this time has be concerned that the blockage might not be ice, but some sort of crud. Which shouldn’t happen. The foot of the sump pump has a filter to keep stuff out.
I think the only way to know for sure would be to take the hose off the pipe on the outside and actually look. There should not have ever been water in there to freeze. Not only because the pump hasn’t turned on in ages, but even if it had, water should have drained away from that section of pipe, not sat there to freeze.
It’s not something we can do now. I don’t want to risk cracking hoses or pipes or fittings in this cold. We’ll just have to keep an eye on the reservoir and make sure this doesn’t happen again. The hose end, meanwhile, now runs into the main path, and we can see it from the kitchen window.
Meanwhile, we are now working on Nosencrantz and Butterscotch. Butterscotch could not be lured out even with cat nip, though I have at least seen her skulking around under shelves and whatnot in there.
Nosencrantz, on the other hand, is quite happy in her new surroundings. The girls came in while I was writing this to give her some attention, and she was just luxuriating on the bed, reveling in skritches. We will slowly let other cats in, one or two at a time, to introduce them. Right now, Cheddar is in here, as one of the more laid back cats. Nosencrantz did hiss at him a bit, even though he was just sitting there, looking at her.
Yesterday’s plans to take my mother to visit her sister at the nursing home changed. I got a call in the morning, because she was worried about the weather. It was blowing pretty hard, and she was concerned. We ended up postponing for now.
When doing my rounds this morning, I found some minor tree damage from the winds.
Today, the plan was to open the outer doors to the sun room during the day to let the kittens use it, then close it up for the night.
At one point, I was outside and decided to sit on the swing seat they like to cuddle on and play with Doom Guy, and get other kittens used to me.
One of the things I did when cleaning up the turd bombs and transferring the cat kibble from its chewed up bag into a 5 gallon bucket, was to put the bucket itself into a box on its side. It just fits into a size medium moving box, with barely enough space above to be able to use the bowl we use to measure out the kibble without taking the bucket out. The box and bucket are sitting on the plastic couch that is also in the sun room, to further make it hard to get at.
Well, that didn’t stop them completely, of course. While I was there, Doom Guy jumped into the box, squeezed in behind the bucket, then stood up to look in. He was able to reach into the bucket and just reach a piece of kibble, take it out, and proceed to crunch away, out of view, behind the bucket. He only did it a few times before coming back for cuddles. It was cute, but I’m thinking we need to find a lid for the bucket!
Just a little while ago, I went through the Old Kitchen to close up the sun room’s outer doors. There was a whole pile of kittens, some scattering out the door, some behind the swing bench they were on, and Doom Guy made a dash for the old kitchen.
One of the other things I’d put on the plastic couch was the bag of deer feed. It normally sits somewhere else, but I moved it there while the floor was being mopped, and hadn’t put it back. It had been knocked onto the floor, with most of the feed spilling out.
*sigh*
I was able to sweep the majority of it back into the bag. As I did that, kittens were dashing around me in all directions, and it sounded like one was stuck behind the dresser I use as a tool chest. I swept up the last dregs of the seed into a dustpan to throw out into the garbage can just outside the doors. I took the opportunity to see which kitten was stuck back there.
Whoops.
So I guess, when I went into the sun room, the skunk was under the plastic couch where I couldn’t see it and, when I disturbed it, it hid in the corner.
I’d seen it earlier in the day, coming through the front gate and up the sidewalk to the house, like any other visitor, before coming around to the cat food under my office window. There was a fair bit of ruckus under there, as not only is the skunk pretty loud under there, but the blue jays were having a field day, going after the kibble.
So I went to check the bowls and, sure enough, they were empty. The skunk had gone in to look for more food, most likely.
I refilled the bowls, hoping to tempt it out.
I waited a while to see if the skunk would come out, then came out of the house through the main doors with a flashlight. No sign of the skunk, but I certainly tempted the kittens out!
All seven of them were very happy to have the bowls refilled!
At first, I couldn’t see the skunk and hoped it had at least come out of the corner and would be making its way out to the food bowls.
I was wrong.
It wasn’t hiding in the corner, after all. It was settled in, quite comfortably! Not the least bit disturbed by my flashlight, nor the flash, when I’d taken photos, earlier.
As I started writing this post, my daughter came by to let me know that all 7 kittens are in a pile on the swing bench. I don’t hear any crunching under my window, which means the skunk hasn’t come out to eat.
The Re-Farmer 