If your home is on a septic system, taking good care of the system is the key to keeping it healthy and working great for years. In addition to regular septic tank inspections and septic tank pumping, there are a few other things you can do to prevent premature septic system failures. The laundry room is one area where you can make a big difference over the life of your septic system.
Septic systems fail when the drain field becomes too clogged with solid material to allow the liquid effluent to percolate into the soil. Septic systems are designed with a septic tank that holds the waste water for a period of time to allow solid material to settle out of the liquid before the liquid flows to the drain field.
When you use a lot of water during a short period of time, all that water flows down the drain into the septic tank which reduces the amount of time that the water remains in the septic tank. This flushes more solid material out into the drain field where it can accumulate and eventually cause the system to fail.
You can help avoid this problem and some expensive drain field repairs by not saving all of your laundry for the weekend. Instead of doing ten loads of laundry on Sunday, do one or two loads each day during the week. By reducing the volume of water going into your septic system in a single day, you allow the septic tank to have more time to do what it was designed to do.
