34-Basement Waterproofing Secrets with Tanner Guimond

Basement water damage is more than just an inconvenience—it’s a costly problem if left unchecked. Tanner Guimond from Green Home Solutions reveals why gutters and grading are critical to keeping water out of your basement, how hydrostatic pressure impacts foundations, and the best waterproofing techniques, including French drains and crack repair with polyurethane and carbon fiber. From high water tables to storm aftermath solutions, learn how to safeguard your home and tackle basement flooding like a pro. Whether you're a homeowner or a real estate agent, these insights could save your foundation and your wallet.

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Chapters

• 1:17 Just 2 Minutes Questions
• 3:46 The Interview

Transcript

0:00

Welcome everybody to just two 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 a second time. Yeah, how excited are you about that? We're good. We're good. So you want to tell everybody who you are? I am Sam. I run CMS Home Inspection. Home Inspector, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, offering full service home inspections, including radon, septic, sewer scopes, wells, and mold testing. Pretty much that's everything. All right, so you're here again? Because I'm the best. Just two minutes. I'm the best. And I'm not going to ask you the same questions I did last time. Thank you very much. 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, OK? All right, I got my timer over here. And so Marmalade Jam, do you? Yes, pretty good. Do you like that? Oh, yeah. What's your favorite type of Jam? The raspberry probably. Raspberry. So what type of bread would you, like, ultimate that you put that together with? Bagels. Is that a bread? Bigels? I like to say bagels. That's bagel. Trust me. OK. All right, so what type of bagel? All of it. Plain sesame is pretty good with it, I guess, yeah. Excellent on toast, too. Yeah, I agree. Sesame is really good. Yeah, yeah. What's your favorite type of non-domesticated animal? All of them. Ah, geez. 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. I'm going to have a zoo in my backyard of North Providence. It's a small yet, but we'll fit them. I think I'll build vertically is what I'll have to do. So what kind of? I want an auto. I want an elephant. I want a hippo. I want. You can pick one. No. This is America. I got to pick one. Oh, pick one. You can't tell me what to do. If you had to pick one. Well, I want an auto would fit pretty good in my house. I got a bathtub. I could fill with water for it. OK. So if you were to go on vacation with that non-domuscated animal, where would you take it on vacation? I usually like to go to Disney with a wife. So I won't take it there, but they don't let it. That's fine. I'll break it in. OK. Cool. Do you hike? No. I used to. But now I'm fat and lazy. You used to. When you did used to, would you go on a hike with Gandhi or a second ranked yogi master? Yogi to beer. Yeah, definitely I'd go with yogi to beer. OK, cool. Aliens live in our homes as ghosts or in the ocean. Not the ocean. I saw that movie signs. Remember they're allergic to water, which was ingenious to invade Earth. That's made out of 70% water. I'm not sure, Melonian. He's a genius. So Sam, you do inspections. You are a savior for agents. We love you because you have a savior. 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. What's the? The nasty bat, septics. Septics. But what's before that? What's in our brains? Train lines, OK. So yeah, the rain line goes into your septic? Well, yeah, I mean, I didn't know what other things enough house besides addicts. Addicts are pretty. Addicts and crawlsbases, I hate those. I'm glad we're not doing the most house designed on crawl spaces. We usually have a basement every now and then. You come across and it does suck. It's my least favorite part. That's what the coveralls are 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 addicts and crawlsbases where like the hatches, you got to squeeze sucking the gun and stuff. But you get in there and it's fine. Yeah, you know, you should. I mean, some guys will send in a rowback. You know, bring about rowback crawlers now. I'm not fan of that. They're expensive for one thing if you lose it. It's like, OK, 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. And then, too, I mean, trying to inspect just like remote controlled cameras. 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. They're like, you know what? I'm going to go in the crawl space. Yeah. So yeah, it's a traditional weekend activity. We're going to the whole family together for it, right? Yeah, yeah. So if we were to talk about septics, and let's just bring it back to like just sewer and septic. Sewer is 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, estraps, drum traps, some diamonds, barrel traps, improper slopes of pipes, negative slope. Actually, you're not, with drain pipes, you're supposed to pitch them about a quarter inch per foot. If you go too steep, you can leave the waste behind. The water will rush past it and the solids will get left behind. So if you go too steep, that can happen. But at a certain steepness, that won't happen. So in plumbing, 45 degrees of moors considered vertical, for example, right? So you're not, you don't want to be at a like a weird angle, like 22% pitch, because that's too much. You'll leave the solids behind. Let the waste flow out just the water, run past it, and then you'll eventually eventually get a clog. So you know, also it's a different configuration. You know, how you connect a vertical to a horizontal pipe. A lot of times people will just go straight down with just a regular tee. You want it to have a kind of angled. So if you imagine a pipe coming down here, you got waste going here, it's going to splatter here. And you know, you want it to go this way, but it's going to splatter here. And then you kind of have some waste built up back here. Oh gosh. Yeah, you don't want 90 degree. That's horrible. Yeah, you would want it to go down and then kind of angle and then go like, you know. Because 90 degree, like a block, it would get a little slope to it, add 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 odors. It's just a little with a P trap. You come down to sink, P trap, boom. That little piece here that will hold on to water in here. And that won't like you can remember. Like, there's a video version, but I do. I do convert it to audio only. Well, yeah. So you get over to the to the video. You get too extra extra explanation. So it's a little, it's the little you part. You'll see underneath your pipe. And it looks like a P kind of whatever. And that just holds on to the water. So you can't get to sewer orders past that little wear, the trap wear. Otherwise, if you don't have a trap, you're just going to have a straight connection to the sewer line. And you know, if you stick your head above that sink or fixture that doesn't have a trap, you'll smell. So sewage, you know, that's the reason why I asked traps and I don't know how it is because they can siphon out and the trap can get empty. And then you can have issues with traps, too. There's like a house is empty. And it hasn't been, you don't have a plumb fixture used for ages, the water will evaporate and you'll get some sewer gas. So I've gone to the house that have been unoccupied for a year and you'll walk in and like, everyone's like, oh, it smells like sewer line. Let's hold up before we start and raise it on, but it's just filled the traps again and see if it still stinks. 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 drain pipe or a vent pipe. Sometimes you'll have, you know, old houses with cast iron. If you're 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 gonna have a leak because it's just a vent, but it's gonna let all the sewer gases out of that vent pipe into your living space because you know, I'm gonna expel those odors through the roof, right? So there you go. Then there's a bunch of other issues that like while you're just visually inspect them, but some of them you can't find without doing a sewer scope. And that's a big reason why I offer at service. Kind of surprising to see sometimes. You go to some states and, you know, you have book of home inspection, you'll add home inspection plus sewer scope. While here when I do a sewer scope, that's very uncommon for agents to see. I get a lot of age, but I've never seen a home inspector do this before. I've never had this done at one of my inspections or for one of my listings or for all of my clients. Yeah, yeah. Some agents actually end up using me repeatedly because I'm one of the few that offers that around here. If not, I don't even know if anyone else does, I'm really checked, 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 this simple sewer scope. And for essentially almost the same price as a raid on test, I could find, you know, an issue that could be up to $10,000 pretty easy. You know, you gotta realize with drain lines, you can have root issues, which that's pretty routine, but you can have other issues like collapsed drain lines. Are you familiar with Orangeburg? Is that only happened with Castiron? No, root you can get with any pipe. I'm really common to see with clay pipes. You can have cracked Castiron. You can have, I've done new construction and sewer scopes on a new construction house where there was a damaged drain pipe because the guy putters excavator bucket through the pipe while he was back filling the trench. You know, then it's happened on a job site and I guess I went slip through. I've done ones where also fairly new construction was a two or three year old house. And there was a rock that went through the pipe, like side going through it, the form to 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 the ground. How do you know this is happening? If you don't scope it. You don't. You don't, straight up. You don't. That's why I offer to service or else there's a lot that goes on and this. How long can it last like that without noticing something? All depends. You know, if it's a regular occupied house, house substantial to damages can vary. Because dirt could go in and clog the drain. Yeah, dirt can go in and clog it. Now your pipe, let's say you're to form the pipe from the rock to, you've basically made your four inch drain line down to, you know, smaller, it could be two inches or something. I did a house recently for a woman. She was buying a house on a septic. A lot of people don't think I'm doing a sewer scope when you're on a septic, but her septic tank was about 25 feet from the house and, you know, it was in a state sale. So her father lived 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 I had Orangeburg drain pipes. And if you're feeling it was Orangeburg, known product that's from the failure. Orange so clay is what it's made of. No, no, that Orangeburg is even stupid up. It's the dumbest product in the history of man. It's a cellulose with tie, like bitumen, right? Okay. So imagine taking, what years did they decide to come up to the 70s? I was up to, up to the 70s. They used that to use it early in the 1900s to the 70s. It's so it's basically cellulose, ground up paper, thing of like, thing of imagine cardboard coated in bitumen oil, right? And now that's your foreign strain line, all right, or through the range or whatever you got for your house. It's paper. So, you know, the laxable, definitely. It's actually, so over the years, the bitumen to the tie kind of dries up. And then your pipe, your water to go into the pipes will kind of cause the pipe to swell, deteriorate. Imagine this wedding cardboard, right? Or wedding paper. It's going to deteriorate. So the pipes, the form, a lot of times you'll seem to go from a circle to an oval. I've seen that, you'll see it. And you'll see that they'll get all mal-shrapen because of like rocks around them too pushing. 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 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, and stuff was going through that. Trying to, it was trying to. That's why she was getting backups occasionally. Oh man, that's wonderful. Yep. Okay, so I'm wondering, like if an agent was to look, I mean, they're in the house, how can they tell that there's that type of material going outside? Does it start from inside the house? Like, no, it's kind of a 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 too in his house and he's all cast iron inside. So Orangeburg is only outside on a ground drain pipe. You'll never see it. Going to the sewer. Going to the sewer. The city was also involved in allowing that. Yeah, yeah, it was completely an approved material. You know, we just learned it's really stupid, I mean. Another stupid thing is cast iron. Yep. You're still allowed cast iron commercial, but we stop doing it. They're confusing how horrible cast iron is. It has this issue. I mean, you'll come across some older houses that have it and sometimes it's in this okay condition still but sometimes it's not. And cast iron or the issue with that is that the tear rates from the inside out. So we 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 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 to send to a place. Another thing is it is prone to cracking, like I mentioned, crack on your drain line as well as the vent part too. And if it's on the drain part or water goes through, that's can leak. And if it's on the vent part, that's going to cause them odors. And I've seen people try to, I've seen a lot of people try to close the cracks. Yeah, yeah. Even worse, I've seen it with silicone. Silicone, yeah. I've seen silicone, and I've seen that like plumbers putty stuff that they got. Okay, the two mixtures that you mix together and you, that's the one. Well, oh, that's like an epoxy. I've seen the epoxy going up. Plumbers putty, it's even worse. I see also it's a plumbers putty. It's like this clay. And I guess you roll it and then you, it's designed, it will actually work. It will stop leaks, but it's just like an improper repair. Like you can't guarantee it's going to last for a long. Yeah. 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 will stop the leaks, but it's designed for temporary emergency leaks only and like not like long term. Like if your water pipes leaking from that, it will work, but yours should cut out that section that's damaged 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 from rocks around there, especially if the backfill material was bad. Yeah, you wouldn't know any underground issues unless it's like catastrophic. Like we run water or when you're doing an inspection, I generally run water for about 20 minutes per fixture. So I'm running a lot of water. So best drain, PVC. Sure, better than doing cast iron. Yeah, I wouldn't, yeah, while you're not gonna see cast iron using new construction anymore, but yeah, everything's commercial. But commercial they want you to use the, yeah, you'll still use that and you'll see it using 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, a lot of times you'll use cast iron. I'm not a fan of the product. It is what it is, so yeah. 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. Is it bulletproof? PVC is plastic. Like bullets gonna go through it, metal on it. But yeah, it's gonna ding off you. But cast iron, it's bulletproof. So that's why they probably want it commercial. That's right, I remember, yeah, I remember all those bank robbers back in the 80s. So they couldn't afford a bulletproof vest or they just bought a bunch of cast iron pipes and strapped it to themselves or getting chewed out with the cops. And it worked really good for them. Yeah, it's bulletproof, for sure. All right. No, don't. That's amazing. Don't try that out, you will die. 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 pipe's 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 orange berg. Really common with almost every house I've ever done that has clay. If there's any plant life anywhere nearby, the drain line, even if it's 20, 30 feet, I have eventually roots, I'm going to try and get there. Because roots are always trying to get to a source of water. So like they'll know there's a source of water and your pipe is that source of water. So we'll try and get it in there. Wow. It was clay pipes is, it was like there's a bellend and then one pipe fits into the bellend and then what they would do is they would patch the end with a little bit of mortar. That mortar over the years will shrink and crack and deteriorate. So now that bellend's open. So yeah, nothing's going to leak out there because your drain pipe's going into the bellend but roots are going to try and get into the bellend. So you'll see that at a lot of times old scope cast iron. It's not that cast, I'm sorry, clay. And a lot of times not that the clay is cracked, although that can happen. It's just that the clay has deteriorated mortar so all the roots are getting at every single bellend. So like you'll scope in every so many feet. You'll find a bellend and then there's a joint. There's the roots. Wow. As far as orange bark, 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 it there doesn't guarantee that the whole line is that same material. They could have transitioned. I've done houses where they transitioned from cast iron to PVC to ABS to ABS 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 an old cast iron and then it goes to clay for a foot or two and then it goes back to cast iron. So like someone did a spot repair in the middle. So just because you don't see that your tank inlet doesn't mean the rest of the line is going to be the same material. Although it all depends on the year of the house built. Like obviously it was built after the 90s. And then you see PVC into house and PVC to septic. It's probably all done with PVC. They wouldn't have done something else in the 90s. Like I say, Orangeburg, they stopped in the 70s. I think if tree roots knew what they were drinking, they wouldn't be piercing the sewer. Oh, they loved that stuff. It's stuff nutrients for them. What do you think fertilizer is? Oh, geez. 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've done new construction or flips. Generally is more where I find that type of stuff with flips where there's a leaking drain pipe in a wall and a ceiling. May or may not have been from the flipper. It could have been, we don't know how far they went during the flip. But yeah, like yeah, for example, the second floor, you have a shower, a bath, or whatever. Pipes goes out there. They could have just repyped that little section that had to connect, like that little one-foot section. But yeah, you'll get leaks in all sorts of things. And new construction, it's less likely because if they're doing their job and they're doing it right, you're supposed to fill the pipes with water, cap 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. And then you're supposed to keep it sitting there to water under pipe for a period of time. And that's how they check for leaks with that. Who does that and who checks to make sure they do that? City inspectors supposed to check that. There's their plumbers are supposed to get a new construction. That's how you're supposed to do it. And then the city inspector would sign off if check him by and be like, oh, nope, nope, leaks here, oh, here's here. Wow, you know, past 30 fails. But, you know, you never really know if the city inspector actually shows up as the issue. There's a lot of construction going on and cities only have so many inspectors, so. What percentage do you think of homes, new construction, that the drain pipes weren't done right? What were leaking? Pretty uncommon, honestly. It's one of the less common issues I find in 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 tightened around the way small stuff like that. But it's pretty rare, actually, I find the drain pipes of new construction only. Luckily, that seems like that's usually done right. I mean, it's not terribly hard to do that right either though. I'm a, you know, a little bit of glue primer. Sorry, we're done with the inside of the house and then the city sewer. Can we miss anything with the city sewer? I mean, that's all part of the sewer scope. So if you're on public sewer system, you know, basically everything's the same, except you don't have a septic tank. In some cities, they'll have septic, they're trying to convert everybody to have a plan to get everybody converted. Now, not too much wanna talk about cesspools, but cesspools is pretty much just a hole on the ground that they dump poop into. Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, it's a big hole they dug, surrounded 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 with a septic tank, you'll have sludge, which is like the poop. Then you have the effluent or the clear zone, which is the middle, and that's what you want to go to your drain, filling 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 the middle zone, the clear zone, or effluent zone, to go out to your drain field. And then that goes out and that percolates and the soil gets 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 all that and it will just weep into 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 if possible or replace with a septic. Massage of truth still allows them if they're functioning as intended. But if they don't pass Title V test, then they have to be replaced. I'm in mass. And then Connecticut, I can't remember off the top. I hit what Connecticut's rules on with them, but I only do like 10 inspections in Connecticut a year. That's more of a, just a license I keep, just a follow client's side, like looking in a westerly and then decide, you know, I don't like that house. Let's look, just over the line and follow you. So with the septic, it's just basically the pipe goes out to this tank that splits things. Yep, yep, exactly. So your pipe goes out from the house into a big tank, usually 1000 gallon, 1250, 1500 gallon tank. And for your traditional septic system, then it goes out from, there's an outlet pipe of that tank once the where the effluence will go and goes to it. But in that one tank, there's, there's like a wall, right? That separates the, or tries to separate the, yeah, if you have a multi-zone tank, you know, you'll have, you can have three compartment tanks. Some older systems are just one big tank on big compartment. And you'll see that a lot in older ones. Newer ones, you'll see sections where you'll see a big concrete wall in them. And that's helped separate. So all this ludge and stuff is less likely to be towards the outlet pipe side. And that helps separate things even better. You could tell by the, look, if you go outside to where the tank is, there's two covers. Not inherently. No, you could have a once chamber with two covers. You could have, you could have a, you know, you could have a one chamber or it 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 one 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 chamber is where the outlet pipe is. Or you might just have a two chamber tank. But either way, those do add a layer protection but a lot of other systems 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 a T-finner with an effluent filter, which helps separate then this 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 solids, it's all gonna just go there. So what they do is they'll add a little T that will go down towards the middle layer because that's where it will drain from. And then the middle layer has to go up through this T and then out through outlet pipe. But if you have just a straight pipe, like my father's house is like this, for example. I did an inspection for him. He wanted to know what's going on with this house. It's like from the seventies. And he'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 there. Bonding moment. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, oh, you guys have been eating good. And so gross. Yeah, but the issue with this system is it's old. So it's just a straight pipe that writes outlet on. And you know, on the top will float since like toilet paper floats. And especially if you're using wipes and stuff those will float. So those old are systems with a straight pipe. All that toilet paper can go right out. You're outlet pipe into your D box and potentially the drain fill and cause clogs. So that's why now the latter, a key. So all the stuff flowing on top can't go right out there because it's actually draining from the middle zone now. Okay. You know, which makes a lot more sense. So if it flows, if it overflows, it just dump liquid to the other side. Yeah, instead of solids. Yeah, exactly. You don't want any solids going to your drain fill, you know? 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 was split off into the drain field, which is set of pipes usually perforated and surrounded by a crushed stone and whatever they're using, depending on the drain. This is D box. Yep, is there access to it? Usually not. Okay, usually not. Usually not. Yeah, 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 your D 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 thin that exists. And I used to do excavation in masks and stuff and also in Rhode Island. And I remember in masks, we put those in when we were doing septics at a new development. It just made it easier. It's nice too for the Title V guys in masks because that's how they get, they have to get to the D box for Title V in masks. Okay. So if you have a riser there, it makes their life a lot easier. But most of the stuff is so cool. Well, they know they have to dig in masks and have a cover opening to it. Yep, there's a cover opening to it. You just gotta dig and find it, which is always a pain. I hate digging. I tell people like, you know, find me where to cover it as exposed 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 it's just a damage. Well, 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, you won't damage. I'm never very thick. But the issue is you go to somebody's neighborhood, somebody's area is where it's like the rockiest yards and history of men. And when you hit a bunch of rocks, it feels kind of similar to concrete. And you know, you gotta kind of use educated guesses and stuff because like, you know, when you hit a tank, it's gonna be the same depth and it's gonna be over, you know, extended period with 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, it feels the same, same elevation. So you think you got to tank. It's just a bunch of frickin' rocks. And then you're wasting like an hour and a half digging, I've done that in pouring rain. And it's like, you know, I don't always have time for that. So that's why I tell people, like, get to the subject tank, cover, expose, prior to him, you get in there. I will dig a little bit if you know exactly where it is and it's like just a couple inches down. I'll dig for that, that's fine. But if we got a dig, a done one's where I, you know, hour and a half worth of digging to find it and get to it and the depth and the size of the cover, sometimes those covers aren't. Small, sometimes they're quite big, big pain but. So from the house to the septic, what distance are we talking here? Generally, you know, 10 feet or so. I mean, I've seen some older houses where you were a little closer. And somehow this is, 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 it was about 25 feet to this tank. But yeah, it can vary, it depends on how size, bigger yard is, but you know, usually they're kind of close to the house. 10 feet, 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 that a pipe that used to go to a cesspool? Yeah, if you cap it off at, so it doesn't go to the cesspool anymore. Well, not 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 the 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. And 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? Hey, you don't want it to go to both though. You need a cap, you need to cap the end that's going to the cesspool. I've known houses where it was old and there was a proof for this back in Ava. It's not a proof anymore where they had a septic tank that went to a drain field and a cesspool. And a cesspool was being used as part of the drain field. And it was a proof 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 the state's going to tell you you have 12 months to remove that cesspool and put a proper drain field in there. Yeah, I had a listing where they were doing the, they were checking the septic system. And they're like, this home doesn't have a septic, it's cesspool. Hmm, that happens a lot. But really what happened is like the pipe continues on, because they opened it, they're like, oh my, this is a cesspool. The pipe continued on to the set. They just use the same, same piping. Like they talked about that. But was it going into the cesspool? No, no, no, no, not someone's draining to the cesspool. Yeah, I didn't, yeah. But they just followed the drain field. Well, you should decommission to cesspools though, for sure. How you decommission as you pump it out and you have to backfill it. You don't, because it could collapse. It's a hole in your yard, right? So you're supposed to backfill them. 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. You just could prevent a caven. Okay, so how about from the tank, the distance between the tank to the leach field or the D box? That can vary too, from houses. It depends how big your yard is. Usually it's not terribly far off, but I mean, can be. I've done somewhere, they had a subject tank next to the house and the pipe goes out underneath their driveway across the yard. And it was like a wide driveway. 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. It was just further than a typical, I would say. But, okay. So I don't think there's no rule for my understanding of like saying you have to have the drain field next 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 wells and stuff like that. Because you don't want to drink your poop. Most people don't, yeah. Some people maybe. Oh, there's a lot of people out there. There's something for everyone. And then it has to be so far away from, for example, like water, the bodies of water, you know. That's one of the issues where you get into like, you know, port Smith areas and stuff. There's a lot of strict regulations there. So stuff like that, you know, it's pretty rare that you'd find anything in a wrong location. But I've come across some systems where they match the plans right and I've done some houses where not so much to well, but like just the system was done wrong. Under size systems for the house for a new system, stuff like that. So a couple of things I want to talk about is the get the septic pump. Is that how often should people do it? And the barriers are finding on occupancy. The form we have kind of breaks it down. The pen is on the size of the house. Just how many occupancy have there. You know, rule of thumb is anywhere from, you know, you can go up to five years for some people. Three is 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 the day, if you pump every year, if you're singing about it, what, 250 bucks to pump out a system, right? My sewer bills more than that for a year. So you're still saving a little bit. And then can you talk about discoloration of the grass on the leech field? Yeah. So you can have a couple of 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 thick grass growing on top of your leech field, that can also be a sign of an issue, such as like a broken pipe or something like that. Not always though. It's, the form to 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 that 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 a mode that long way too short. It could be not enough sun, stuff like that. So you're supposed to report if there's more than two issues. For as far, 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 what I mean? Well, you're not supposed to be like, oh, you have burnt out grass, your system's failed. I'm gonna tell on you. Yeah, no, not like that. But, you know, it's, it depends. You have to use some common sense. You have to know what you're looking for. If you see burnt out grass and you open up the tank. And it lines. So that could be it. Yeah, people could see them in lines. Like it's visually an agent should be able to be like, oh, that's weird. Oh, that must be where the bleach field is. Yep. But if you see that and then say you open up the septic tank and it has a really strong odor, like more than a regular septic tank, that's all can 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 thins and recommend have it look that further. And to look at that further and that gets into complicated depends on what they need to do. What they need to look into the drain field, make sure things are not plugged up, make sure things are, you know, connected, still underground, stuff like that. And the state of Rhode Island has a site for people to look, right? And see kind of, it's not the best, but it's there. It's doable. You can look up most septic plans on DEM's website, on site, a wastewater treatment system. So search DEM septic. Yep, plans. Yep, something like that or I have it bookmarked on my thins, so I forget exactly how you find it. But yeah, it's like DEM, Rhode Island DEM, OWTS on site, wastewater treatment systems. I have to save them my book point too. Yeah, exactly. And you can look it up and you can type into address, you know, tell you select a city, then you type into street address. Issue is, you know, I can always find that. You know, I'm always going to find a house because sometimes it's an old house where the permits were done long time ago and it's uploaded to the website. Sometimes it's, if it's, was a part of the development, it can be a pain to about to find because they might not have assigned it a plat 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 12, 20 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 that's just not possible to find and it's just, it's not the best system but it's better than nothing. It's better than like Connecticut where there's no online system you have to like, just go to a town hall and stuff. Tons of information today, Sam. Thank you very much for stopping by. How do people find you? You can find me on my website, cmshomespection.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 you can look at my calendar and see what I got available. You'll also always call me or my reception share and be happy to take your call at 401-830-0966. And also you can always contact me at Sam at cmshomespection.com for my email. And no need to get two different inspectors. This guy does everything. One stop shopping. Awesome. Thanks for stopping by, Sam. Yes, thanks for having me.