my girl moved into a house 4 years ago and 2 years before that they installed a new septic system. she had some toilet issues and got into her head that the septic tanks/s had to be pumped. the toilet issues turned out to be nothing as a few week before that i had to reset the toilet because the wax ring faile and she had a leak. now fast forward to now. so i found out she has 2 1000 gallon tanks i got the site plan form the county. so i dug up the tank lids the first tank and the second tank. it turns out they entered the first tank from the sides and not under the first lid. she has 2 areas of use. so i dug up the first lid for the first tank and the last lid for the second tanks. i may dig up the second lid for the first tank and the first lid for the second tank to inspect the cross over trap. and to see if it actuall has one as some tanks that are a single unit with two chambers just have a hole in the wall. so this is what i found i made 2 test pipes from pvc the first has a 4" L on it so i can push it thru the scum layer and turn it to lift the scum layer to get the scum thickness. and the second pipe i put a sock on it so i could get an idea of the sludge layer thickness and the total water line depth. so two time now i tested the tank and this is what i got when looking into the first lid closest to the house you can see the water and scum so i pushed the L hook pipe into the scum and turned it 90 deg and lifted it and i have 1" of scum then i made a hole in the scum layer and then put the sludge test pipe into the open water hole and then down to what felt like i was just hitting the sludge. i was at about 45" deep and i kept pushing down and then at 48" i hit the floor of the tanks. so i let the pipe set there for maybe 5 minutes and then i drug the pipe in an x pattern for like 12" in each direction. and then pulled it out real slow. when it came up i had 5" of dite on the sock. in doing the formula for when to pump i came up with 6" of scum sludge numbers and 48/3 is 16 and so i put 6 over the 16 for a 6/16 number. and in the formula if the top number is lower than the bottom number the tank is good to go. am i correct? the tanks is nowhere near ready to pump correct or not? i talked to 3 pumpers and one tells me the system is doing it's job perfectly and 2 tell me i need to pump it out now. but the test tells me i'm good to go yet for some time. and f you go by people in the house she has 1.5 people in the house. 2 kids every other week. it has been 6 years now and those are the numbers she has. i can post some pictures of the effluent tank and the dip stick with the dirt on the sock. the picture of the scum did not save and if needed i will go back and get that and a video of the process i used. to get those numbers. i did dip thru the effluent tank outlet trap and that came up with maybe 1" of dirt on it so that tank is doing good. so to pump or not. is the 240$ word. i don;t mind paying for pumping but if it is not yet needed then no sence wasting the money. also going by my past experience i had a septic tank 25 years ago and i did the same tests on it back then and for the 20 years we used it it looked good. and we sold the house we had to pump by law. and the pumper told me i had 6 or 7 years yet on the tank before it needed to be pumped based on 4 people and the use it was getting if that continued. and i had 6" of scum and about 12" of sludge in that tank and i had on tank. and that formula would have been 18 over 16 and been in need of pumping. so it was ready by the formula but not by the company that did the job. thanks for any ideas here

Hello, I pretty much know nothing about water pumps and such. I have my own well with a submersible pump. Here's my problem. Recently we have had very little water pressure. We also have had like little grains of sediment come out of the bath tub spigot. The water pressure has gotten to the point where it's barely coming out of the bathtub spigot. Pressure seems decent coming out of the sink faucets. I assume they would have more pressure being that they are smaller? Anyway, I looked at my pressure tank and the gage is reading zero. I took off the cover to the points and they looked ok, I guess? I turned my breaker to the pump on/off but that did nothing. My pressure tank is only about 2 years old. Water pump was a Goulds and is about 10 years old now. I don't have any idea what is going on. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks as always! Jack