The Search

Have you ever been searching for your septic tank?  No? Then you have no idea what we have been going through today.

Septic tanks need to be cleaned out once in a while. One of those beloved honey wagons will come by and take away....well whatever has accumulated over the years. 

But what if someone has hidden your septic tank under layers of soil and rocks and you have no idea where it is, because you bought the house without having any idea of where the septic tank is. 

Naturally, you might go into your basement (if you have one) or crawl under your house in order to locate certain PVC pipes which would indicate the direction of where you might find said tank. So did we. We even noticed a slight depression in the lawn where the pipe might be running. And the pipe could be located. But then luck went somewhere else. Following the direction of the depression, we dug a hole 10ft away from the house, without finding anything other than rocks. And we dug another hole and again there were rocks, but no pipe. At this point a neighbour popped over swinging another shovel. How nice was that? 

                             Landscape with holes

In chain-gang fashion, we dug down to the pipe where it was leaving the foundation and found it, the pipe that is. From there we dug a WWII trench following that pipe. And thus we discovered the pipe making a bend. So we followed it some more until we could make out a new general direction. Another hole was dug and we found a "T" in the pipe. ?????

Yet another hole (all of these were 2ft deep) was dug upwards of the "T". Suddenly my shovel struck something hollow. Should there..could there...maybe be the tank? At last?

Eagerly, we continued digging. We knew we would be close. And sure enough, what seemed to be a metal lid showed itself. In order to uncover the found treasure, the hole was made wider. Strangely, the lid seemed to be curved on two sides. And it was rusty iron. Could this be the roof of a dug-down 1957 Chevy? Or was this really the tank we had been searching for? I have never seen a septic tank made of steel. Digging further, the strange metal object seemed to continue lengthwise, but curved into the ground sideways, suggesting a barrel shape.

Meanwhile, it was close to lunch so we called it off for the time being. Once inside, Bea went onto the Internet looking for septic tanks in steel. What she found was a company in Nova Scotia offering tanks the same shape as what we had found. It also said that steel tanks were not approved for septic fields anymore, due to corrosion problems. (Why are they still offering those???)

We took a shower and left further investigations to another day. If we are lucky and further digging will finally reveal a lid on the tank, and we are even more lucky, and the lid can be opened, than we might just be able to call the honey-sucking wagon. If that lid has to be ground off and thus be destroyed we would need a spanking new septic tank. 

I knew there would be something coming up to spend our money on.