Increasing Septic Capacity

Jeff has more space in his house than he and his wife Jesse need, so they decided to build a living space above their garage and rent the house out! However, with the addition of this living space, they needed to increase the capacity of their septic system. Their existing system was one tank, that had two chambers, approximately 1000-gallon capacity in the first chamber and 500-gallon capacity in the second. The new system design required two tanks, the first one a 1000-gallon single chamber tank and the second the same size as the existing tank.

As the photos were drawn, this first tank needed to be placed directly under the existing deck, and the second tank would be placed approximately where the current existing tank sits. After discussing with the homeowners, and the county sanitarian, we all came to the agreement that dismantling the existing deck was an excess cost that did not need to be incurred. Instead, we were able to climb into the existing tank (after pumping of course) and using a concrete saw, remove the center divider between the chambers, taking this from a 1000/500 tank to a single chamber 1500-gallon tank.

Man, what a Dirty Deed!

For the second tank we had to dig up the existing line in their gorgeous lawn, and also dig a hole for the new septic tank to be placed in. We took extra care to first and foremost move and stockpile the existing topsoil, so that it can be placed back on top of the tank in the future, allowing for the lawn to regrow as beautiful as it once was!

Once the original line was located, it was cut and a hole was dug in the line to allow for the new two chamber tank to be installed.

All connections were made and inspections passed! Lastly, the topsoil we had stockpiled was used to spread over the top and everything was compacted to allow for the grass to be replanted and restored to it's previous state as quickly as possible.