Has anyone installed their own Septic system?

[Ecumenist]

Here's the deal; We asked for a bid from a contractor local to the area, (R-E-A-L-L-Y rural Northern California) to install a fiberglass septic tank,(3000 ga) and the leach field is going to be using the Infiltrator System. We have already bought the tank from a local producer who will deliver the tank and set it for free. We are purchasing the Infiltrator, rock, (we have an account at the local gravel yard), the distributor box, PVC pipe etc.

The reason that I am looking at the option of installing it ourselves? The bid came back..

3100.00 for installation of the tank et.al ...JUST FOR LABOUR!!

1400.00...A DAY!! Just for his equipment to sit onsite and his travel to the site. The area he has to travel from to our property is about 25 miles... We're not talking about traffic issues..UNLESS YOU COUNT THE OCCASIONAL COW, EMU, SHEEP, GOAT OR ALPACA wandering onto the roadway. ( estimates 3 days to complete the work) 4200.00 for the backhoe to park on my little piece of paradise.

Does anyone else think this is excessive? AND has anyone installed their own septic?

[eleny]

1. Just off the top of my pointy head

We probably wouldn't dream of doing it ourselves.

This past summer we had a whole lot of things going on around here. For one, we had our old sewer lines replaced. And when we had the garage built, hubby wanted a drain in it. Well, the deal is that you have to pass the codes. Inspectors can be pretty strict when it comes to all this. I'll add this - I'm glad they are strict. If something goes wrong with plumbing, they can go terrible wrong.

It's a comfort when the inspector comes out and corrects something or demands a tweak for safety sake.

Yes, plumbing is terribly expensive. But when we watched all the work being done from all the dirty digging and having to be sure that angles and the pitch of pipes is exactly right and connections secure for waste to go where it's supposed to go.... well, we're glad we weren't the ones doing it. In other words, we flush and bathe with confidence.

You guys are probably way more adept at home building and improvements than we are. My guy had some health problems off and on for a year and this factored into our decisions. Also, he's more of a car guy and one who tinkers and repairs things and who cares for the landscaping. If you do tackle this project, I'd do one heck of a lot of reading before jumping into it.

All the best always! Let us know how it goes.

[Kolesar]

2. I rented a 5 inch trencher to run 4 inch sewer lines and beat the stuffing out of it

It was a walk-behind trencher and it was no match for the dried clay and roots in my front yard (a.k.a. "bricks"). There were V-belts busting and flying out of the safety shrouds before we returned the machine. Then we dug the rest of it by hand. About two or three feet deep, leading from the house to the septic tank. We trenched about thirty feet, dug about twenty, and then widened the trenches because 4" pipe really does not fit in a 5" trench.

Back then I could do fifty pushups.

For leach lines, you need a two foot wide digger and you will need hundreds of feet of lines. Depends on your intuition of how well you can operated a backhoe. What's the rental cost? Someone has to tow the backhoe to your house and that will add cost.

So, that's my impression of digging

Perhaps you could install a composting toilet in the house that uses shorter leach lines. I really don't know.