L’Aventure de la Septic Tank, Part Deux

So the plumber guy from the septic company came by shortly before noon to install the much-anticipated Outlet Baffle Filter (please imagine choruses of angels here) and immediately commenced to scratching his head, muttering, and generally looking kinda grim.

Uh Oh.

He explained that what with our having the Old, Bad kind of tank (circular, one 14” hole at the top), instead of the Normal, Good kind of tank (rectangular, three holes on the top)…and due to the fact that there is apparently an elbow joint in that pipe somewhere just out of sight…and something about its downward slope…compounded by the fact that it’s impossible to see exactly where that outlet pipe is, on the inside of the tank… we’re all gonna die.

Or at least, there was Just No Way for him to reach inside the top of tank, to be able to connect the filter thingy to the outlet pipe. Unless he was in the tank. And that, my friends, is a three-person job, involving a tripod, from which one harness-wearing small person is suspended. The other two people are there to make sure the first person doesn’t pass out from the fumes.

I’m not making this up.

Um, so we really, absolutely, positively, must have this thing installed? Yes. Otherwise, we’re looking at a new leach field in the foreseeable future. An ENGINEERED leach field. Ka-ching!

So he went away, promising to call us with a precise, and guaranteed large, dollar figure estimate. Sob.

But then! Cue the angels! His office called back. He had Figured It Out, and would be right back. He just needed more stuff. Sure enough, an hour or so later…

…he rematerialized with various sections of PVC pipe and a concrete drill.

He cut the outlet pipe outside of the tank. This was gratifying, as this was exactly what Kevin had spent so much time shoveling yesterday to expose. Then he threaded a section of presumably narrower pipe through it, and into the inside of the tank. He was able to then thread onto that, a vertical section of pipe, which houses the the filter.

Like so. The filter is the yellow thing.

He suspended the whole thing from the rim of the tank with a metal strip screwed into the concrete.  By the time I realized the job was done, Kevin was already shoveling dirt over all the evidence! Faithful blog readers, I asked him to lift the cover off the tank to show you the filter.

THRILLING, n’est-ce pas?

In other news, uh, I don’t really have any other news.