Just 2 Minutes - Interviews by Kamil Sarji

33 - Cesspool, Septic, Sewer – What Agents Must Know!

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Understanding cesspools, septic systems, and sewers can make or break a deal for real estate agents. Sam Bianchini from CMS Home Inspection returns to share crucial insights and practical knowledge about these underground systems. Learn how to identify hidden issues like Orangeburg pipes, root intrusion, improper slopes, and outdated traps before they become costly problems. Whether it's a home inspection for septic or sewer, Sam explains what to look out for, how sewer scopes uncover hidden dangers, and why agents should advocate for inspections. We also discuss cesspool regulations, why they’re phased out, and how septic tanks operate to protect homes and yards. Sam shares real-life scenarios, from crushed pipes to clever repairs, and offers expert advice to help agents navigate this unglamorous but vital part of homeownership.

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A house recently for a woman. She was buying a house on a septic. I don't think of doing a sewer scope, one Eurosceptic, but her septic tank was about 25 feet from the house and I was in a state sale. So her father lives there. So she knew some history of the house and she knew occasionally there was backups of the sewer line. She wanted to see why that was happening. So I did the sewer scope and it had Orangeburg drainpipes. And if you're familiar with Orangeburg, that's a known product out prone to failure. It's unlikely you'd ever have to do every year. Somebody will do that, however, and it's not the worst idea. I mean, at the end of the day, if you pump every year, if you're thinking about it, what, 250 bucks to pump out a system, Right. My sewer bills more than that for a year. So you're making out? Yeah, it's a little bit. Welcome, everybody, to just 2 minutes. I am your host, Kamil Sarji with Gold Door Realty. And today I have Sam. You're the first guest that's been here the second time. How excited are you about that? We're good. So you want to tell everybody who you are? I am Sam. I run CMS, home inspection home inspector in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut, offering full service home inspections, including radon, septic sewer scopes, wells and mold tests, and pretty much does everything. All right. So you're here again because they're just 2 minutes best. Yeah, I gotcha. And I'm not going to ask you the same questions I did last time where you got I don't know. You're the only guest that walked away on those questions. Good times. Good times. So I picked nice, gentle ones, and we're going to go through them. Okay? Yeah. All right. I got my timer over here and. Yeah, So marmalade, jam deal. That's pretty good. Deal like that. Oh, yeah. What's your favorite type of jam? The raspberry, Probably Raspberry. So what type of bread would you like, Ultimate? You put that together with bagels? Is that a bread bake bagels? I like to say bagels as well. I trust me. Okay. All right. So what type of what type of bagel? All of it. Plain sesame is pretty good. One. That, I guess. Yeah. Excellent. On toast, too. Yeah, I agree. Sesame is really good. Yeah. What's your favorite type of non domesticated animal? All of them are cheese. I don't know. Well, I'm going to domesticate all of them. I'm going to have them all. I'm going to open up a zoo. Kind of a zoo in my back yard of North Providence. It's a small yet but will fit them. They'll Berchtold vertically as well. I have to know. So what kind of I want an Aurora. I want an elephant. I want a hippo. I want You can pick a one now. This is America. I can pick one. You can't tell me what to do if you have to pick one. Well, I want to order. Would fit pretty good in my house. I got a bathtub. I could fill with water for it. Okay, so if you were to go on vacation with that non domesticated animal, where would you take it? On vacation. I usually like to go to Disney with the wife. So we'll take. I'll take it every day. Don't let it pass. Fine. I'll break it in. Okay. Cool. Do you hike? No, I used to, but now I'm fat and lazy. Used to when you did. Used to. Would you go on a hike with a Gandhi or a second ranked Yogi master Yogi to bear? Yeah, definitely. I go, You'll need a beer. Okay, cool. Yeah. Aliens live in our homes as ghosts or in the oceans, not the ocean. I saw that movie signs, remember? They're allergic to light, which was ingenious and invade Earth. That's made out of something many. Some lighter. I'm not sure. Melanie. And she's a genius. So, Sam, you do inspections. You are a savior for agents. We love you because you have a safe. You're sweet. Sometimes we get nervous because it's like, Oh, my gosh, what are we walking into in this house? But you're able to identify stuff. And but today's topic, I really want to focus on the nasty part of a home. Yeah. So what's the the nasty, bad subtext? So what's before that? The train lines. Train lines. Okay. Or so. Yeah, either line goes sooner or something. But yeah, I mean, I don't know what other things in the house besides attics. Attics that are pretty attics and crawls cos I hate those, I'm like I'm glad we're not in New England. Most houses aren't on crawl spaces. We usually have a basement. Every now and then you come across. I it does suck. So at least your part. I spot to cover also for. But yeah, and not many inspectors even go in there or attempt to go in there. But you do if you can fit. Yeah. I mean I've gone into some attics and crawl spaces where like the hatch is, you know, you got to squeeze, suck in the stuff, but you get in there and it's fine. Yeah. Are you sure? I mean, some guys will send in a robot. You know that robot crawlers. Now, I'm not fan of that. They're expensive, for one thing. If you lose it, it's like, okay, good luck. It's stuck down there. But I couldn't fit down there. I'm not going to be able to fit to get it back than to try and inspect. Just like a remote control camera. Essentially, you're going to not be able to see as much. I'd prefer to get underneath there, be able to give wood a poke, see if this termite stuff like that. Yeah. Which is important because, you know, when will the homeowner ever be able to go in there except, you know, they're bored and like, you know what? I'm going to go in the crawl space. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a traditional weekend activity for the whole family together for it, right? Yeah. Yeah. So if we were to talk about skeptics and let's just bring it back to, like, just sewer and septic sewer super easy. So let's, we'll talk about that first. So what are issues in the house that go to the septic or sewer? Well, improper drain designs and proper pipe configuration, outdated traps like commonly we'll see like as traps, drum traps, sometimes barrel traps and proper slopes of pipes. Negative slope. Marshall, you're not what drain pipes you're supposed to pitch them are quarter inch per foot. If you go to see, you can leave the waste behind. Water will rush pass it and the solids will get left behind. So if you go to steep, that can happen. But at a certain steepness that won't happen. So in plumbing, 45 degrees or more is considered vertical, for example. Right. So, you know, you're not you don't want to be at like a weird angle, like 22% pitch because that's too much. You'll leave the solids behind. But the wastewater just the water run past it and you'll that could potentially eventually get clogged. So, you know, all sorts of different configurations. You know, how you connect of a vertical to a horizontal pipe. A lot of times people will just will go straight down on just a regular tee. You want to have it kind of angled. So if you imagine a pipe coming down here, you got ways going here. It's going to splatter here and you want it to go this way, but it's going to splatter here and you're going to have some waist build up back here. Gosh, yeah. And you don't want 90 degree. That's horrible. Yeah. You would want to go down and then kind of angle and then go like, you know, because 90 degree with like block it would like a little slope little slope to it out of, out of like a 22 or something like that. 45 whatever you want. So traps are ways what are the, what's the purpose of a trap traps the water so you don't get this. It is it's just a little or the p trap. You come down to sink P trap and boom, that little piece here that will hold on to water in here. And like, I remember, like it's this is a video version, but I do I it to the audio converted to audio only. Well yeah so you get drawn over to the to the video extra extra explanation so it's all it's little you part you'll see underneath your pipe and it's looks like a pew kind of whatever and I just hold on to the water so you can't get sewer orders past that little where the trap where otherwise if you don't have a trap, you're just going to you have a straight connection to the sewer line and you'll if you stick your head above that sink or fixture that doesn't have a trap, you'll you'll smell so sewage. You know, that's the reason why I asked traps aren't allowed is because they can siphon out and the trap can get empty. And then you can have issues with traps too. There's like if the house is empty, if it hasn't been, you don't have a pole and fixture used for ages. The water will evaporate and you'll get some sewer gas. I've gone in a house that have been unoccupied for a year and you'll walk in and everyone's like, Oh, it smells like sewer line. Let's hold off before we start raising. Alarm bells. Just filled the traps again and see because silly things and then usually that fixes it in that situation. What's the other what's another worst case scenario for that smell? You could have A million different things could be going on. It could be a broken pipe, broken drainpipe or a vent pipe. Sometimes you'll have, you know, old houses with cast iron. If you're a cast iron, stack is also your vent going up through your roof. I've seen situations where the cast iron is cracked in the wall. So yeah, you're not going to have a leak because it's just the vent, but it's going to let all the sewer gases out of that vent pipe into your living space because you normally expel those odors through the roof. Right? Right. So there you go. Then there's a bunch of other issues that like while you're just visually inspecting, but some of them, you can't find it without doing a sewer scope. And that's a big reason why I offer that service. I'm kind of surprised to see sometimes you go to some states and, you know, you book a home inspection or at home inspection plus sewer scope. Well, here when I do a sewer scope, that's very uncommon for agents to see in a lot age. I have never seen a home inspector do this before. I've never had this done at one of my inspections or for one of my listeners or for all my clients. The idea some agents actually kind of use me repeatedly because I'm one of the few that offers out around here. If not, I don't even know if anyone else. I haven't really tried, but I know it's very uncommon and it's a really good service. Absolutely. You know, I found several you can find some big ticket items with a simple sewer scope and for essentially almost the same price as our rate on test. So I could find, you know, an issue that could be up to $10,000 pretty easy. You know, you got to realize what drain lines you can have, root issues, which that's pretty routine, but you can have other issues like collapsed drain lines. So are you familiar with Orangeburg that only happened with cast iron, No roots you can get with any pipe really common to see with clay pipes. You can have cracked cast iron. You can have. I've done new construction and sewer scopes on a new construction house where there was a damaged drainpipe because the guy put his excavator bucket through the pipe while he was backfilling the trench. You know, things happen on a jobsite and I guess I won't slip through. I've done ones where also fairly new construction of the two or three year old house and there was a rock that went through the pipe, like started going through the form the pipe and cracked it a little bit at the top. Luckily, I was at the top. This is outside the house. That's outside the house underneath. And how do you know? How do you know this is happening? If you don't scope it, you don't, you know, straight up you don't. That's why I offered a service or else there's a lot that goes on this. How long can it last like that without noticing something? All depends. You know, if it's a regular occupied house, how substantial the damages can vary because dirt could go in and clog. The dirt can go on, can get now your pipe, let's say uniform, the pipe from the rock to you may actually meet your four inch drain line down to you know, smaller could be two inch or something. I did a house recently for a woman. She was buying a house on a septic life. People don't think of doing the sewer scope Eurosceptic, but her septic tank was about 25 feet from the house. And you know, I was in a state. Sales of her father lived there, so she knew some history of the house and she knew occasionally there was backups on the sewer line. She wanted to see why that was happening. So I did the sewer scope and had Orangeburg Drain pipes. And if you're familiar with Orangeburg, I had known product out from the failure Aunt. So Clay is what it's made of? No, no. That Orangeburg is is even stupider. So dumbest product in the history of man it's cellulose with tar like bitumen. Right. Okay so imagine taking what years do they do decide to do something that was up to up to the seventies and they use that to use it early 1970s. It's it's so it's basically cellulose ground up paper thing of like thing imagine cardboard coated in bitumen oil right now that's your four inch drain line All right Or three inch or whatever you got for your house. It's paper. So you know, the collapsible. Definitely. Exactly. So over the years, the bitumen, the tar kind of dries up and then your pipe, your drink water to go into where the pipes will kind of cause the pipe to swell, deteriorate. Imagine it's what, in cardboard, right? Or what? On paper it's kind of a cherry. So the pipes, the form, a lot of times you'll see them go from a circle to an oval. I've seen that. You'll see and you'll see their little mouse will get all male shape and because of like rocks around them to push. And so I've done some of those. So this house it went from, it had some really tight restricted areas where I could barely get my camera through. I was actually nervous about getting my camera stuck in at one point because it was such a big hump. My camera is, what is it, 23 millimeter plus a skid. So the pipe was probably at one point it was probably like 30 millimeters wide, which is going to and stuff was going through that trying to while I was trying to. That's why she was getting backups occasionally. Oh, man, it's horrible. Yeah. Okay. So I'm I'm wondering, like if an agent was to look I mean, they're in the house, how can they tell that that there's that type of material going outside? Does it start from inside of the house like that? They transition to it outside. You'll never see Orangeburg inside the house. A lot of old houses with cast iron or as they went from cast iron to Orangeburg, my neighbor actually had it to in his house and he's all cast iron inside. So Orangeburg is only outside the underground drainpipe. You'll never see going through this. You're going to see this city. Yeah. Okay. So the city was also involved in. Yeah. Allowing that or. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was completely approved material. You know, we just learned it's really stupid. I mean, another stupid thing is cast iron. Yeah, you're still allowed cast iron commercial but we stopped doing it. The confusing. How horrible cast iron is It has its issues. I mean you come across some older houses that have it and sometimes it's in it's okay condition so it sometimes it's not and cast iron that issue with that as it deteriorates from the inside out so get pitted and if you scope it you'll see all these little dimples inside it. Right. And eventually those dimples, those pits get so thin that the walls are very, very thin. So you'll get you'll see like the waste water, like rust form and globs of waste water on the outside of the pipe inside the house. And that's a really good sign. It's under a place that is is prone to cracking, like I mentioned, crack on your drain line as well as the bent part too. And it was on the drain part or water goes through as can leak. And if it's on the vent part, that's going to cause some odors. And I've seen people try to I've seen a lot of people try to close the cracks. Even worse, I've seen it with silicone. Silicone? Yeah, I've seen silicone. I've seen that like plumber's putty stuff that the okay to mixers that you mixed together and you that that one wall. Oh that's like an epoxy I've seen like toxic one. Yep. Plumbers party it's even worse. I see all sorts of plumbers bodies like this clay and I guess you roll it and it's designed it will actually work or stop leaks, but it's just like an improper repair. Like you can't guarantee it's going to last for long. Yeah, but I've seen it use and it does work, but it's meant for a temp fix like, you know, you'll see people put it on like a water supply pipe, even it works under water, it's just clay and you form it and then you put it on there and it sticks and it'll stop the leaks. But it was designed for temporary emergency leaks only. And like, not like long term, like if your water pipes leak, and from that it will work. But you should cut out that section that's damage and replace it properly. So I've seen homes that were abandoned and they abandoned. So no, in this cast iron outside, you don't know what's going on out there until you scope it and you realize that it's like crushed because the cast iron crushed. That can happen. Yeah. From rocks around there, especially if the back fill material is bad. Yeah. You wouldn't know to any underground issues unless it's like catastrophic. Like we run water. When you're doing an inspection. I generally run water for about 20 minutes per fixture. Right. I'm a lot of water. So best drain PVC. Sure. Better than doing cast iron. Yeah, I wouldn't. Yeah, well, you're not going to see cast iron using new construction anymore, but yeah, it's very commercial. They want you to use the they usually use that and you'll see it used in commercial for all sorts of things. Also a lot of commercial use it for like roof drains. If you got a flat roof like internal roof drains after they use cast iron. I'm not a fan of the product, it is what it is. So yeah. So maybe, maybe they want it because it's waterproof. I mean, sorry. Maybe they want the cast iron because it's bulletproof and PVC is not bulletproof. Isabelle For a piece, PVC is plastic like bullets going to go through a metal on that, but it's going to ding off, but cast iron, it's bulletproof. So that's why they probably want the other commercial. That's right. I remember. Yeah, I remember all those bank robbers back in the. So they can't afford a a bulletproof vest or just bought a bunch of cast iron pipes and strapped it to themselves or in shootouts with the cops. And it worked really good for them. Yeah, Foolproof, for sure. All right. Oh, no, don't. That's amazing. Don't try that out. You will die. Oh, gosh. All right. So I think we talked about a lot of the. Oh, let's go back to the roots thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the pipes going from the house to the outside, wherever, whether it's septic or sewer. Talk to me about roots. You can get roots in any pipe, PVC or cast iron or abs or clay or Orangeburg. Really common with almost every house I've ever done that has clay. If there's any plant life anywhere nearby the drain line, or even if it's 20, 30 feet, I'll eventually roots. I'm going to try and get there because roots are always trying to get to a source of water so they'll know there is a source of water and your pipe is that source of water. So I'll try to get in here. It was clay pipes is it was like there's a bell and and then one pipe fits into the bell end. And then what they would do is they would patch the end with a little bit of mortar. For that mortar over the years will shrink and crack and iterate. So now that bell ends open. So yeah, nothing's going to leak out there because you're drainpipes going into the bell end, but roots are going to try and get in the bell. So you'll see that a lot of times I'll scope cast iron and it's not that cast iron sorry clay items not that the clay is cracked although it can happen. It's just that the clay has the mortar. So all the roots are getting in every single bell. And so you'll scope in every so many feet you'll find a bell end and then boom, there's a joint. There is the roots. Wow. As far as Orangeburg, the one way you can find it actually is if you are on septic. A lot of times you'll see it be at the inlet pipe coming into the septic tank. That's the only place you'll ever see it if you have it. And just because you don't see there, it doesn't guarantee that the whole line is that same material they could have transitioned. I've done houses where they transition from, you know, cast iron to PVC to abs to abs, and then back to PVC into the tank. Right. So I've seen sections where it's just a little two foot section of clay and they replace the rest of the line, right? Or I've seen houses where it goes from PVC in the house to old cast iron, and then it goes to clay for a foot or two and then goes back to cast iron. So like someone did a spot repair in the mill. So just because you don't see it at your tank doesn't mean the rest of the line is going to be the same material. Although, you know, that all depends on the year of the house. Built like obviously was built after the nineties is and you see PVC in the house and BBC two septic it's got there are going to be PVC you know they were I've done something else in the nineties like I say Orangeburg they stopped in the seventies I think if tree roots knew what they were drinking they wouldn't be piercing the sewer or a lot of that stuff. It's, you know it's got stuff nutrients for them but using fertilizers. Oh jeez. So I want to finish one more thing about the house. Inside the house, you've been to a lot of new constructions. These guys are or gals are putting in piping and closing up the walls. Have you run into the piping, not being sealed properly. And now it's like the ceiling is leaking for some reason or it's like wet for some reason. Yeah, I mean, I don't do construction or flips generally is more where I find that type of stuff with flips where there's a leaking drainpipe and a wall and a ceiling may or may not have been from the flipper. It could have been, you know, we don't know how far they went during the flip, but yeah, like, yeah, for example, second floor, you have a shower or a bathroom or whatever pipe goes out there and he could have just ripped up that little section that the connection like that or one foot section. But yeah, you'll get leaks and also a new construction that's less likely because what if they're doing their job and are doing it right? You're supposed to fill the pipes with water, tap them at the outlet like right before it exits the house and fill all the pipes inside the drain pipes all inside the house, all the way up to the roof stack. Oh, and then you're supposed to keep it sitting there, the water under pipe for a period of time that's already released. With that, who does that and who checks to make sure they do that? City inspector supposed to check that there's they're plumbers, They're supposed to do a new construction. That's how you're supposed to do it. And then the city inspector would sign off if check them by and be like, open up all the leaks here. You always hear, wow, you know, pass or you fail. But, you know, you never really know if the city inspector actually shows up as an issue. There's a lot of construction going on and cities only have so many inspectors. So what percentage you think of homes, new construction that the drain pipes weren't done right or leaking are pretty, pretty uncommon. Honestly, it's one of the less common issues. I find any new construction. I mean, I have found some like leaking fixtures and stuff, like small stuff, like stupid stuff like a hose connection to a faucet, like a sink faucet that like, was loose, like the nut wasn't taken at all the way. Small stuff, but it's pretty rare, actually. Find the drainpipes of new construction. Really. Luckily, that seems like that's usually done right. I mean, it's not terribly hard to do that right either, though. You know, a little bit of glue primer. All right. We're done with the inside of the house and then the city sewer. The women say anything with the city sewer. I mean, that's all part of the sewer scope. So if you're on public public sewer system, you know, basically everything is the same as if you don't have a septic tank. And some citizens have they have septic. They're trying to convert everybody to have a plan to get everybody converted eventually. Now, not too much want to talk about cesspools, but cesspools, cause it's pretty much just a hole in the ground that they dump the poop into them. Yep. Yeah, it's a big hole they dug surround by rocks on the side. And yeah, everything just goes in there. So like with a septic, you have a tank that separates the solids from the liquids and then, you know, so you'll have at the bottom of a septic tank, you'll have sludge, which is like the poop. Then you have the effluent or the cleared zone, which is metal, and that's what you want to go to your drain, fill in the top is called the scum, which is like fats and greases and stuff that float up to the top. And so it separates that. So you want only in a middle lot zone to clear zone or effluent zone to go out to your drain field and then that goes out and that percolates in the soil is absorbed with a cesspool. You don't have that secondary system, so you just have a big hole where everything goes into and eventually the poop will break down and this and all that and all this. We've been to the soil around this one big pit. Rhode Island doesn't allow them anymore. If you buy a house with a cesspool, you got one year to have it removed from service and either connect to town sewer possible or are replaced with a septic. Massachusetts still allows them if they're functioning as intended, but if they don't pass Title five test, then they have to be replaced. I mean, mass. And then Connecticut, I can't remember off the top of my head what Connecticut's rules are with them, but I only do like ten inspection in Connecticut a year. That's more of a just a license I keep. Just so follow clients that are like looking in westerly and and decide, oh, you know, I don't like that house. Let's look this over line. And I'm like, All right, I'll follow you. But so with the septic, it's just basically the pipe goes out to this tank that splits things. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. So, yeah, the pipe goes out from the house into a big tank, usually thousand gallon, 1250, 15 gallon tank. And you for your traditional septic system, then it goes out from there's an outlet pipe of that tank once to where the effluent will go and goes to what's what in that one tank. There's there's like a wall Right. That separates the if you tries to separate the Yeah. If you have a multi-zone tank you'll have you can have three compartment tanks. Some older systems are just one big tank, a big compartment you'll see a lot. And all the ones, newer ones you'll see, you'll see sections where you'll see a big concrete wall in them. And that's that's helped separate. So all the sludge and stuff is less likely to be towards the out lit pipe side to help separate them. Even better you could tell by the look if you go outside to where the the tank is there's two covers not inherently no you could have a once chamber with two covers. Good to have you could have a you know you could have a one chamber, could be a two or three chamber. The only thing with it is you'd have to open it up and look inside and you'll see a big concrete wall in the middle. Or sometimes I've seen some that have three chambers, and that's depends on what type of system it is. And once you open up the cover, you'll see. But you know, those all kind of help separate because you'll have a big tank and then you'll have the front or near the inlet that's going to work, be where most of the solids are going to build up, and then that might overflow into the second chamber and then the third chambers where the outlet pipe is. Or you might just have a two chamber tiny. But either way, those do add a layer of protection. But a lot of older systems all are just one big open tank. No, none of that. They might have baffles at the inlet and outlet of maybe concrete, sometimes steel. Nowadays we don't use that for the baffles. Nowadays, usually you'll see t fin or that effluent filter which helps separate than the pipe comes in. Then you have a T going down that way. It's because if you imagine if you just had a straight pipe going out, right, if you have too many solid, it's all going to just go over there. So what they do is they'll add a little tee that will go down towards the middle layer because that's where it will drain from. And then the middle layer gets to go up through this tee and then out throughout the pipe. Or if you have just a straight pipe, like my father's house is like this. For example, I did a section for him. You want to know what's going on with this? I was just like from the seventies and it's like, Hey, Sam, while you're here, let's play with my subject. I'm like, Oh, I'd love to have the hops. So open it up. Look in their bonding moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, Oh, you guys are going to be in good and cross now. But the issue with this system is it's old, so it's just a straight pipe, right? It's outlet on and you know, on the top will flow things like toilet paper, toilet paper floats and especially if you're using wipes and stuff, those sort those older systems with the straight pipe, all that toilet paper can go right out your outlet pipe into your D box and potentially the drain field and cause clogs. So that's why now we'll add a key. So all the stuff flowing on top can't go right out there because it's actually draining in from the middle zone now. Okay. You know, which makes a lot more sense. So if it flow, if it overflows it just dump liquid to the other side. Yeah. Instead of solid. Yeah, exactly. You don't want any solids, go into your drain, fill the up. So with the septic, it's like the cesspool. You'll have the tank. It will separate in a one, two, three chamber, go out to an outlet pipe at the other end of the tank, then go to what's called the distribution box or D box, when I will split off into the drain field, which is set of pipes usually perforated and surrounded by crushed stones. And whatever they're using to pass this D box is their access to it? Usually not. Okay. Usually don't want to. Usually not. Yeah. No, we don't open that up. That's usually dug down pretty deep. They do make D box risers, which is nice. So you can just have a cover and it's basically a big riser so you can see inside the box, make sure it's in good shape, but you won't see that often. I actually have never seen that myself in Rhode Island. I know it's a thing that exists and I and I used to do excavation in mass and stuff and also in Rhode Island. I remember in Mass we put tubs in when we were doing subjects at a new development just made it easier as if, you know, it's nice to for a title five guys in mass because that's how to get they have to get to the D box for Title five and mass. Okay. So if you have a riser, it makes their life a lot easier. But most of these little schools, they just they all they know they have to dig in mass and discover opening to it. Yep. Discover, open into it. You just got to dig and find it, which is always a pain. I hate digging. I tell people like, you know, find me where to cover is expose it before I get there for inspection. I've had houses where like, you know, you're digging in three different spots because they're like, Oh, it's over there. And, you know, you're doing the soil probe and you're trying to find stuff and it feels like you hit the concrete tank, but you're going around and do some damage to the concrete tank should be fine. The concern is probing. If you have a fiberglass tank, you'll damage that for sure, but the concrete ones won't damage. They're very thick. But the issue is you go to some of these neighborhoods, some of these areas where it's like the Rocky yards and the straw man. And when you hit a bunch of rocks, it feels kind of similar to concrete. And, you know, you got to kind of use educated guesses and stuff because, like, you know, when you hit a tank, it's going to be the same depth and it's going to be over an extended period, width and length. Right? I've come to some places where just you hit a rock, you move over six feet, you hit another rock, same depth feels the same and the same elevation. So you think you get you got the tank, it's just a bunch of frickin rocks and then you're wasting in like an hour and a half. Dig. And I've done that in pouring rain. And that's like, you know, I don't always have time for that. So that's why I tell people, like into the septic tank cover expose prior to when you get in there. I will dig a little bit if need be, if you know exactly where it is and it's like just a couple of inches down, I'll dig for that. That's fine. But if we got to dig, I've done ones where I, you know, hour and a half worth of digging so into it and the depth and the size of the cover, sometimes those covers are small, sometimes they're quite big. They paint about. So from the house to the septic, What distance are we talking here generally, you know, ten feet or so. I mean, I've seen some older houses where they were a little closer and some houses they're quite far. I've known some houses where it was like 34, 40 feet in the back yard. I just did one where I was about 25 feet to the tank. But yeah, it can vary. Depends on how big your yard is. But you know, usually they're kind of close to the house. Yeah. Okay. And if there was a septic system before, I mean, the drain is already from the house is going out to this pipe that goes out to the cesspool. So can they just connect that pipe into a septic tank? So you're saying a pipe that used to go to a cesspool? Yeah, if you keep it off it so it doesn't go to the cesspool anymore. Well, now cap it off, but just add another pipe to go to the new tank. Yeah, as long as you. So like if you're saying you got a straight pipe going out to an old cesspool, you could add a T right. Or an elbow. I would. So if you're listening, watch, you go out straight out. This is going to the cesspool. Now, let's say you put your septic over here. What I would do is I would cut the pipe back here. I would add an elbow and then redirect it. So it goes into there. Right. Okay. You don't want to go to both, though. You need a counter to cap the end. That's going to the cesspool even on house is where it was All there was approved for this back in April. It's not approved anymore where they had a septic tank that went to a drain field and a cesspool. And the cesspool was being used as part of the drain field. And then it was approved back in 68 or whatever the hell it was done, but wouldn't pass standards now. So unfortunately, you do that. You tell them, okay, you're going to have to. Yes, the system functions today, but State is going to tell you you have 12 months to remove that cesspool and put a proper drain field in. Yeah, I had a listing where they they were doing the they were checking the septic system and they're like, this home doesn't have a septic cesspool. I have to do a lot. But really what happened is like the, the pipe continues on because they opened it. They're like, like this is a cesspool. The pipe continued on to the set. They just use the same same piping like it's like they talked about that. But was it going into the cesspool? No, no, no, no. Not so much drainage or a cesspool, but they just followed the. Well, here's what you should decommission the cesspools over for sure. I decommission as you pump it out and you backfill it. You don't because it could collapse. It's a hole in your yard, right? Yeah. So this was a backbone. So I saw them across a lot of old cesspools that were only partially filled in or not filled in at all, and they're not in use. I tell people, you just got to fill in all the way just to prevent even. Okay, so how about from the tank, the distance between the tank to the leach field or the D box that can vary to from house to house? Depends how big your yard is. Usually, it's not terribly far off, but I mean, can be, you know. I've done somewhere. They had a septic tank next to the house and pipe goes out underneath their driveway across the yard and it was like a wide driveways, like, you know, you could probably park four cars and then it went to a D box on the other side of the driveway. And then from there it went to the drain field. So that was probably about 40 feet away. That's just further than typical, I would say. But there's Oh, I don't think there's there's no rule from my understanding of like saying you have to have the drain field that's far away from the septic tank. The rules are how far away it can be from the house, how far away it can be from, you know, wells and stuff like that, because you want to drink your poop. Most people don't. Yeah, some people maybe. Oh, I just want people out there. There's something for everyone. And then, you know, it has to be so far away from for example, like water, bodies of water. You know, that's one of the issues where like, you get into like, you know, Portsmouth areas and stuff. There's a lot of strict regulations there. So stuff like that, you know, it's pretty rare that you can find anything in wrong location. But I've come across some systems where they didn't match the plans right? And I've done some houses where not so much the well, but like just the system was done wrong, undersized system sort of house brand new system, stuff like that. So a couple of things I want to talk about is the get the septic pumped, is that how often should people do it and the barriers, depending on occupancy, the form we have kind of breaks it down depends on the size of houses. How many occupancy have there. You know, a rule of thumb is anywhere from you know, it can go up to five years for some people threes, not bad. It's unlikely you'd ever have to do every year. Some people do that, however, and it's not the worst idea. I mean, at the end of day, if you pump every year, if you're thinking about it, what, 250 bucks to pump out a system? All right. My sewer bills more than that for a year. So you're making out? Yeah, Still saving a little bit. And then can you talk about discoloration of the grass on a Litchfield? Yeah. So you can have a couple things going on there. If the Leech Field has a lot of burnt out grass, that could be could not always, but could be a sign that, you know, your system's malfunctioning if you also have a lot of extra lush green grass growing on top of your leech field. That can also be a sign of a of an issue as much as like a broken pipe or something like that. Not always. So it's the the form the state gives us to fill out septic form. Here in Rhode Island, it says that it's only considered an issue if you find another issue with the system. Right. So if you have two things going on right then and you so you see that in conjunction with another failure of the system or malfunction of the system, then that's where you would call it out. But you wouldn't necessarily report on that because there can be a lot of reasons why the grass could be burnt out, there could be the mowed. That line way to show it could be not enough sun, stuff like that. So you're supposed to report if there is more than two issues for as far as well, we're supposed to report if there's issues, but as far as a burnt out or burnt grass or super lush grass, we're only supposed to report if there's another issue in conjunction with that. Okay. You know, I mean, we don't we're not supposed to be like, oh, you have burnt out grass, your systems failed. I'm going to tell you. And I'm not like that. But yeah, it's it's it depends. You have to use some common sense. You have to know what you're looking for. I mean, if you if you see burnt out grass and you open up the tank and lines. So that could be it. Yeah. People could see them in lines like it's, Yeah. It's visually an agent should be able to be like, oh that's weird. Oh that, that's, that must be where the bleach field is. Yeah. Well if you see that. And then so you open up the septic tank and it has a really strong odor like more than a regular septic tank. That's okay. And also that's where you would then be like, okay, your septic tank stinks worse than normal and your drain field is burnt out grass right now. That's where you would report on those two things and recommend have it looked at further and to look at that further and that gets into complicated depends on what they need to do or what they need to look into the drain field. Make sure since are not plugged up, make sure things are, you know, connected so on the ground, stuff like that. And the state of Rhode Island has a site for people to to look right and see kind of it's not the best but they're it's doable. You can look up most septic plans on the website on site a wastewater treatment system. So search the septic. You have plans, you have something like that or I have it bookmarked on my phone so I forget exactly how you find it. But yeah, it's like the Rhode Island d o wts on site wastewater treatment systems. I have it saved on my book file too. Yeah, exactly And you can look it up and you can, you can type in the address, you know, so you select the city then you type in the street address issue is, you know, I can always find that, you know, I was going to find a house because sometimes it's an old house where the apartments were done a long time ago and owns uploaded to the website. Sometimes it's if it was a part of a development, it can be a pain the butt to find because they might not have assigned it of plot and lot number yet and you'll see a bunch of houses on one street and maybe at best you'll get a poll number and then you have to download like 1220 plus, you know, a couple dozen different plans and look at them and see where they line up on the street compared to the house you're going to inspect. And then sometimes it's just not possible to find. It's just it's not the best system, but it's better than nothing is better in like Connecticut, where there's no online system. You have to like just go to the town hall stuff. Tons of information today. Sam, thank you very much for stopping by. How do people find you can find me on my website, CMS home inspection dot com. You can book completely online there instant quote shot out for you. And if you like the price, you can just click confirm and then you can look at my calendar and see what I got available. You can also always call me or my receptionist. Sharon would be happy to take your call at 4018300966. And also you can always contact me at Sam at see him home inspection dot com for my email and no need to get to different inspectors this guy does everything one stop shopping. Awesome. Thanks for stopping by Sam. Yes thanks for having me.

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