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Oh! Am I glad you are here today? Guess what I have discovered? I found a septic system that is being installed and you know what, they have not covered it over with dirt yet. The inspector is coming tomorrow, so it is a great opportunity for me to show you the basic components of a septic system.

The septic system consists of the septic tank, the distribution box, and the leads field. This is the actual septic tank. It is a precast concrete structure that a crane actually lives in the position and this particular one is probably 750 to maybe a thousand gallon capacity and what happens, they waste water right out of the house comes directly into this tank. It has got this leads that allow you to inspect the inside of the tank and they also serve a very important purpose. Every three or four years, you need to have a company cam that actually puts some pipe down in here and they pump out all of the solids that collect inside the septic tank.

This is the distribution box. What it does is the waste water from the septic tank comes through this pipe goes in to this little box and it goes out to the lynch field through these four different pipes.

This is the lynch field and it looks a little weird because of all these concrete. It is not really a Normaline. Checkout what is behind me, that road way. Well you know what, this lynch field is going to be underneath the road that leads to the house under construction. What happens in the lynch field is that water comes through the distribution box. It goes out into those four pipes and feeds into this lynch field. The lynch field consist of about a foot thick layer of sand and the waste water percolates down through the sand. It gets cleanse of all the bacteria and pathogens and then it can flow back into the water table. It is that simple. That is how septic system work.

I am Tim Carter for AskTheBuilder.com.

If you want to discover more home improvement tips, go to AskTheBuilder.com.

I want to give really special thanks to Ritz Brow and Josh McNeal for allowing me tape this septic system.

Oh! Am I glad you are here today? Guess what I have discovered? I found a septic system that is being installed and you know what, they have not covered it over with dirt yet. The inspector is coming tomorrow, so it is a great opportunity for me to show... click to read more