Moving to Family: The Septic Tank Saga
So part of moving home involved getting a well and septic. We don’t want to skimp on them. For our well we ended up with a 42 foot deep bored well that was filling at .7 gpm and ended up costing us just over $12,000 with the well pump and everything – though we haven’t gotten the water test back yet, so it may need a softener or reverse osmosis system….
The next thing was the septic. We ended with an aerobic system. It’s basically a water treatment plant in the ground. It has a motor built in that keeps everything moving and a chamber with chlorine. There is electricity running to it and it will need serviced each year. It was approximately $5500 with the power hooked to it.
Now we are facing the settling… So that I have been handling with a shovel to fill in the gaps. Ultimately I hope to get some fake rock looking covers also to hide the tops of the tank.
While putting everything in we have been finding all sorts of old metal parts to the farm. We’ve found old bike handle barns, parts to tractors, fences, and more! Sometime in the future I think a metal detector will be fun!
I was lucky and got people here pretty quickly. For the well I had to call several people, using the local map on the Illinois Water Survey Site that shows all the wells and who the well driller was. We ended with a different provider for the well versus the well pump, but they are both now in. The septic took a while also to find someone that wasn’t too busy, but we ended with the father of a friend from grade school. (He is a licensed installer)… The only real issue was getting the supplier for the aerobic tank to install the motor and the correct lids. We finally have them now though! So all is ready.