The week after the Fourth of July, one of my sons, Ed III, came for a few days with his kids who live in Germany. Lucky for me, because I needed help installing the septic system and it appears Lucas has some skills we didn't know about. After helping drag some trees out of the area, Lucas asked if he could get into the trench. Ta Da!
That was fun enough, but the next thing I knew he was driving the bull dozer with the help of Scott Schroyer of Hash Farms Excavating.
To the right in the picture below you can see how thick the young woods were where the drain field was installed. Literally hundreds of small trees were cut down. I hope to use most of them in various ways, as archways, railings, wattle fences, plant supports, etc.
Initially we had planned to install a system that needed only two 70-foot runs, just a few feet from each other. Before the job started we realized there was not enough room to put in the line with the extra space needed for a perimeter drain as required. It would have run too far south where the terrain drops off quickly, way past the dozer shown above.
A request to install instead three 50-foot runs was denied. No reason was given, so we fell back to a "traditional" drain field. It was less expensive, but as you'll see it ate up an enormous amount of space - about twice what would have been used otherwise. In all we would dig up five 50-foot fingers spaced 8 feet apart and ten more feet on the west and north for a curtain drain.
Further, as the project proceeded we realized the drop-off east of the third finger was also too severe. To deal with this issue the other two fingers were angled to the east, across the trail near the hydrant. This wiped out the last buffer area to the west of that trail. The resulting open space is huge, but the deed is done and the system is ready to use.
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