How Do I Know If My Fairfax County Va Septic Tank Needs Pumped Out?
How do I know if my Fairfax County VA septic tank needs pumped out? We get this question on a fairly regular basis from the clients we serve. It’s easy to understand why. Everyone who has a septic system on their property has at least heard of the nightmare scenario of raw sewage backing up in their homes. It’s something you want to avoid at all costs, thus the question.
If you’ve been wondering the same thing yourself, you’re in luck! This piece was custom written for you. Below, we’ll fully answer that question and give you some valuable tools you’ll need to help ensure that your septic system provides you and your family with years of mostly hassle-free service. Here goes!
How Do I Know If My Fairfax County VA Septic Tank Needs Pumped Out?
Here’s the short answer: In general, we recommend having your tank pumped out every three to five years, and have a professional service company like ours inspect your system from end to end while we’re doing that.
That allows us to spot any issues that might be developing with your system and correct them while they’re still in their formative stages and relatively inexpensive to address.
The important thing to realize about that though, is that it’s just a general guideline. A rule of thumb. The reality is a little more complicated because every household is different. The exact interval of time your tank will need pumping out depends on a number of factors including:
- How many people are living in your home
- How often you have guests staying with you overnight
- And how good your septic tank habits are
Septic tank habits, you ask? Yes! It’s important to remember that living in a home with a septic system is vastly different from living in a home that’s connected to a municipal sewage system. After all, if you are connected to a sewage system, then anything you flush down your toilet or pour down your sink drains is gone and out of your life the moment it clears your pipes. Someone else will deal with it.
Sure, it might cause a clog, but the second you deal with that, it’s over and done with. The offending material becomes someone else’s problem.
It doesn’t work like that if you have a septic system. Anything you pour down the drain or flush down your toilet winds up in the tank, which means that sooner or later, you’re going to have to deal with it. The more often you pour or flush inappropriate things into the tank, the faster it’s going to fill up, and the more often you’ll have to have the tank pumped out.
Mostly, this comes down to being more mindful of what goes into your system. No grease down the sink, and nothing that isn’t biodegradable entering the system. If you can do that, you’ll help guarantee that your system functions the way that it should.
Another important part of answering the question ‘How do I know if my Fairfax County VA septic tank needs pumped out?’ is understanding when it is trying to alert you to a problem.
While your system doesn’t have the benefit of fancy electronic diagnostic tools or automated alerts, it still tries, in its own way, to let you know when it’s having problems. Unfortunately, you have to know what kinds of things to be on the lookout for or you’ll miss them entirely. Here are some of the common signs to be aware of:
- If you see grass growing over your drain field that is a notably brighter shade of green than the grass growing everywhere else in your yard.
- You suddenly start noticing foul smells drifting up from your sink drains and your toilets.
- You also start noticing foul smells in and around your drain field.
- Every time you turn on a faucet or flush a toilet, the pipes inside your walls start to shake, rattle and groan.
- Your sinks drain very slowly and your toilets won’t flush properly, no matter how much time you spend employing your trusty plunger.
Any time you start noticing any of these things, don’t hesitate. Call us right away. These represent your system calling for help.
They don’t necessarily mean that it’s time to have your tank emptied again, but they could. In any case though, the most important thing to remember is that septic problems never magically fix themselves. They only ever get worse over time, and ultimately, whether the issue is that your tank is reaching maximum capacity or something else, they all wind up the same way. With raw sewage backing up into your home.
The good news is that it never has to get to that point. At the first sign of trouble, take swift, decisive action. Give us a call and we’ll come out and get to the bottom of whatever is causing the problem.
Before we do any work, we’ll provide you with a free, no obligation estimate so you’ll have a good understanding of what it will take to put the problem behind you. Then, assuming you’re comfortable with our estimate, we’ll take care of it for you.
We’ve been in the business a long time, and there’s not much our guys haven’t seen, so whatever kind of problem you’re having, we’ve got you covered.