How do I maintain my septic system? A homeowner needs to recognize that periodically septic systems are going to accumulate solids that must be physically removed. The maintenance of a septic system by a...
The maintenance of a septic system by a homeowner is somewhat limited to making sure that you put the right stuff into it. In other words, septic systems are ideally designed to handle whatever came out of your human body. They will tolerate small amounts of other things such as toilet paper, laundry water, and dishwater but they are ideally designed and happiest when they receive materials that come through a human body. So the very first thing is make sure you don't put stuff down the drain that didn't first go through your body generally.
The second thing is that septic systems are similar to our human bodies, in that you can put liquids and solids in and the septic system will digest and handle those liquids and solids. Unfortunately, unlike our human bodies the septic system only knows how to get rid of liquids. It has no ability to eliminate solids, so a homeowner's maintenance issue is that periodically these tanks are going to accumulate solids that must be physically removed. That's called pumping.
