Question:
Our septic field normally shows up as 5 very green strips in our yard. In the past week two of the green lines have started to die. We are wondering if this is a sign of a problem with our drain field. Thank you.
Answer:
This is a classic story. You most likely have what is called a serial distribution leach field.
This means that all of the effluent (liquid leaving your septic tank) goes to the first of the five lines of trenches you have until it fails, and then by design flows to the second keeping the first one filled and failed until the second one fails and then the effluent goes to the third one etc etc.
The important fact is that each line stays failed and full of effluent in this process. An anaerobic conventional septic system is designed to fail from this process.
What happens with the plant growth over the lines is that the effluent in the lines rises to a depth where it gets into the root zone of the plants growing over the lines. Initially, through a biological process commonly known as nitrification, a group of chemolithotrophic bacteria (you don’t want me to explain what these guys are here) “oxidize” the nitrogen in ammonia to nitrate.
Nitrate is a fertilizer as I’m sure you know.
Now the plants over the drain field have access to liquid and food. They stay green when surrounding plants don’t and or grow more robustly in comparison with these other plants. This is the green stripes you mentioned. Eventually, these plants are exposed to too much fertilizer and liquid and become stressed and die. Over fertilization is often a problem for plant health. That is what is now happening with the die back of these green stripes.
This means that your leach field is extremely marginal and very near failure.
This is the time to install a Septic Genie and remediate these lines. In fact, for remediation, this is the best time to install a Genie as the field hasn’t totally failed and the effluent from your septic tank is still being absorbed sub soil. Obviously, it takes a bit longer to restore function if the system is in total failure.
