Is Bleach Harmful To Woodbridge Va Septic Systems?
Do you use bleach-based cleaners? Odds are good that you do. There are so many on the market today that it’s hard to avoid them. That may lead you to start wondering and worrying: is bleach harmful to Woodbridge VA septic systems?
It’s easy to understand the worry. After all, bleach is lethal to bacteria and your septic tank needs a strong, healthy colony of bacteria in order to do its job properly. The good news is that the answer to the question ‘is bleach harmful to Woodbridge VA septic systems?’ is no, unless you dump massive quantities straight down the drain.
Keep right on using those bleach-based cleaners. The small amount of bleach they’ll introduce to your system isn’t nearly enough of a concentration to be problematic. You’d have to pour a couple gallons of it straight down the drain before it would do serious harm. As long as you avoid doing that, your tank will be just fine.
Unfortunately, the question ‘is bleach harmful to Woodbridge VA septic systems?’ can prove to be a bit of a distraction. Since bleach itself isn’t normally problematic, spending too much time worrying or obsessing over it can draw your attention away from other potential hazards that can be a much bigger problem for your trusty septic system. Here are a few examples:
Grease
Most people know that it’s not a good idea to pour grease down the drain, but it happens with shocking regularity anyway. There are two main issues here:
First, some of the grease will remain inside the tank where it will progressively clog your system until you have it pumped out. Second, another portion will escape the tank and once it’s in the drain field, it will float to the surface and harden, creating a problem we call grease capping, which prevents your drain field from processing wastes efficiently.
You may have seen or heard about products that promise to dissolve the grease, rendering it harmless and allowing it to flow out of the tank without causing issues. It’s just marketing hype. Those products not only don’t work, but they’re also incredibly harmful to the bacteria living in your septic tank, which makes an already bad problem even worse.
Chemical Drain Cleaners
While the answer to the question ‘is bleach harmful to Woodbridge VA septic systems?’ is generally no, or at least not in limited quantities, as little as a teaspoon of chemical drain cleaner can be devastating to your tank’s bacteria. These should be avoided at all costs, as all they’ll do is generate big repair bills for you.
Too Much Water In Your System
This one might be a little puzzling to you. After all, every time you flush a toilet or turn on a faucet, you’re introducing water into your septic system, so how can more water be a bad thing?
The main issue in this case is that when you introduce too much water to the system too quickly, it winds up in your drain field, where it supersaturates the soil. When your drain field reaches the point where it can’t absorb any more water, it loses the ability to process waste. Not good.
While excess water can be introduced into your system via a number of roads, there are two main ones to be aware of. The first are the downspouts connected to your rain gutters. Fortunately, this one is easy to fix. Just be sure they’re angled away from your drain field and they won’t be a problem.
Second, be on the alert for dripping faucets or toilets that run constantly. Either of these can add a shocking amount of water into your system in a very short period of time. The moment you see either one, break out your tools to fix it or call your plumber immediately.
Other Solids
Grease isn’t the only thing you shouldn’t pour down the drain, but you’d be amazed at how many non-biodegradable objects wind up in your septic tank. That’s especially true if you have small children, who seem to take great pleasure in watching random objects vanish like magic when they flush them down the toilet. As with grease, the only way to get this stuff out of your tank is to pump it out.
Again, it’s not that asking the question is bleach harmful to Woodbridge VA septic systems?’ is a bad thing, just don’t let it distract you from other issues like the ones we described above, all of which are significantly more problematic than small amounts of bleach.
This, of course, brings us to the topic of maintenance. We mentioned a couple of times in the descriptions of other septic system problems, the importance of having your tank pumped out at regular intervals. Our recommendation is that you have the tank pumped and your system inspected every three to five years in order to minimize your chances of a major problem.
If you can’t remember the last time your septic system had service, it’s probably well past time, and as the area’s #1 septic service company, we can help with that. We’ve been proudly serving the area for years, and at this point, there’s not much our veteran team hasn’t seen.
We’ve built our reputation by exceeding the expectations of each and every customer we serve, and we’d love the opportunity to impress you. Call our office today.