Is Bleach Harmful To Manassas Park Va Septic Systems?
Has it been a while since your home septic system has seen any maintenance? If you can’t remember when the last time you had your system serviced was, odds are that you’re overdue for it.
Our recommendation is to have your tank pumped out and your system inspected every three to five years in order to ensure that it’s operating at something close to peak efficiency. Doing so will allow our experienced techs to put expert eyes on your system and spot problems while they’re still small.
All else being equal, small problems tend to be a lot cheaper and easier to fix than big ones, and if you’ve lived in a home with a septic tank before, then you know that big problems tend to all end up the same way. If you wait too long to address them, sooner or later, you’re going to end up with a backflow of raw sewage inside your house. That’s a nightmare you don’t want any part of!
Fortunately, there’s a simple fix for that. As the #1 septic service company in the region, we can pump your tank, inspect your system and fix any problems we find so it never gets to that point.
While we’re on our customers’ property taking care of their septic systems, we get asked a lot of great questions about home septic systems. One of the more common ones we get is this: ‘is bleach harmful to Manassas Park VA septic systems?’
It’s a great question and it’s easy to understand the concern. After all, many popular household cleaning products are bleach-based. Bleach kills bacteria. Your septic tank needs bacteria, and some of the bleach from the cleaners you use is bound to find its way into your tank so…
As we said, we totally understand the fear, but the truth is that the answer to the question ‘is bleach harmful to Manassas Park VA septic systems?’ might surprise you.
The amount of bleach that finds its way into your septic tank as a result of your use of cleaning products is trivial and is insufficient to cause any real damage. In fact, you’d have to go to the store and buy 1-2 gallons of bleach, then pour it directly down the drain before you did any genuine harm. If you can avoid doing that, you’ll be just fine.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with the question ‘is bleach harmful to Manassas Park VA septic systems?’ but asking it does run the risk of distracting your attention away from other potential hazards that pose a much greater threat to your home’s septic system. We’ll outline a few of those threats just below:
Grease
Everybody knows that pouring grease down the drain is a bad idea, but it seems to happen with disturbing regularity anyway.
The biggest problem that arises from this is what’s known as grease capping. Some of the grease will escape your tank and once it’s in the drain field, it will rise to the surface and harden, which prevents the soil beneath the hardened cap from getting oxygen. If the soil doesn’t have enough oxygen, it can’t process wastes effectively.
Chemical Drain Cleaners
While the answer to the question ‘is bleach harmful to Manassas Park VA septic systems?’ is generally no, it’s a resounding yes if you change the word bleach to chemical drain cleaner. In fact, even tiny amounts as small as a single teaspoon can devastate your tank bacteria. Stay as far away from chemical drain cleaners as you can.
Water
This last one might surprise you and make you scratch your head. After all, your septic tank is tied to your home’s plumbing system, so how could water be bad?
Specifically, we’re talking about excessive water being fed into your system. The reason it’s a problem is because it winds up in your drain field. Your drain field processes waste by percolating it away. That’s why you had to get a per-test when you bought your place, perc, being short for percolation.
The problem is, soil can only percolate so quickly, and when the soil in your drain field is supersaturated, it temporarily loses its ability to do so. No perc, no waste processing. Not good.
Excess water can arrive in your drain field by a number of different roads, but the two main ones are the downspouts attached to the gutters on your house and dripping faucets and constantly running toilets. Thankfully, if you’ve got problems in either area, they tend to be easy to fix.
Where your downspouts are concerned, just be sure they’re angled well away from your drain field and you won’t have a problem. If you have dripping faucets or a toilet that runs all the time, a quick call to your local plumber will knock it out. It’s amazing how much water even a slow drip can add to your system, so this isn’t something you just want to let go indefinitely.
As we said earlier, it’s not that the question ‘is bleach harmful to Manassas Park VA septic systems?’ is a bad one, it’s just that asking it may draw your attention away from the kinds of issues we described above, all of which are potentially more harmful to your septic system than bleach.
That brings us back to the topic of maintenance. If it’s been a while since your system had any, call our office today and schedule your appointment. You’ll be very glad you did.