Dealing with life's ... crap

[layla]

The septic system froze. *weep* It's actually been happening for some time -- toilet's been flushing slow, the bathtub's reluctant to drain, and finally, a couple of days ago, it got to the point where it just wouldn't do it anymore, and we finally realized that no, it is NOT a clogged air intake that's causing the problem, because we uncapped the sewer vents and they are full of ice.

To make a really long story short, it is currently being thawed with the heating element from a water heater, lowered down one of the holes -- hopefully by now we've sufficiently worked out the initial side effects such as shorting out the circuit (no insulation on heating element) or melting the pipes (yeah, we did some of that too).

One unfortunate thing about freezing sewer lines is that they tend to happen a month or two AFTER the actual cold weather, because it takes awhile for above-ground temperature changes to propagate down through the ground. So you think you're safe and then ... wham!

Comments

Re: Poopie!

[vogelein.livejournal.com]

Duh. It's me. Who else would send you links about Humanure?

Re: Poopie!

[vogelein.livejournal.com]

Oh, here's a page that talks about several kinds. Gotta love da hippies.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/03/the_hot_poop_on.php

Re: Poopie!

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

I could probably have figured out that it was you. ^_^

It's something to think about, but since we do have a (usually) functional septic system, I'm not sure if it'll be happening anytime soon. There are a lot of other things around the place that we want to spend money on first, at the very least.

Besides, we'd still need the septic for laundry and such, unless we did some kind of gray-water reclamation thing.

Although ... a composting toilet would probably cut our water consumption in half, and water is expensive. Hm...

Re: Poopie!

[vogelein.livejournal.com]

That's what I was thinking; more water to drink and wash with. Plus you can reroute the grey water to do other things like water the garden. If you eliminate your black water, you can just have one drain for the rest of the house, and use bio-friendly soaps so the garden doesn't get overwhelmed with phosphors.