We are STILL waiting on the contractor to come and finish siding and roofing the house. So in the meantime, we’ve been working on the septic system. I posted last time about how I was trying to find the strength and willpower to get started on that project. Well, I am happy to report that phase 1 is just about finished!

Phase 1 = hooking up the sewer system from the house to the septic tank.

Phase 2 = the sewer system from the septic tank to the leach field. We haven’t even started this phase yet. It requires renting an excavator, etc.

But we are feeling accomplished at the progress we have made. Especially since we’ve been doing all the backfill, etc by hand. No machines. It takes a while, but it doesn’t cost money.

Ok, well, technically we’ve had to buy DG (decomposed granite, which is a type of sand) to surround the septic tank, but other than that, it’s been free. In fact, we got some other fill dirt for just the price of gas to go get it.

We did get some help on the septic trench. My nephew and his wife came to town and we put them to work!

Actually, they wanted to help. And now whenever we get to use our toilet, we’ll be able to thank them for helping. 😁

We have a sand pit on the property that we were initially mining sand from to bed the septic pipe in.

And it was working just fine, but it was a very slow process as we could only get small amounts of sand at a time. But it allowed us to start the process. And as we all know, starting is half the battle.

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Not too long after the above pictures were taken, we decided we needed to move along a bit (or a lot) faster, so we decided to purchase sand to bed the pipe and surround the tank in.

Once we got the pipe laid and inspected, and just before we started covering it, we took some measurements. This is very important if we ever have to dig that thing back up for any reason.

We passed the inspection with flying colors, and it was time for backfill!

But first…we had to clean out all the rocks and debris that had fallen in the pit over the winter. Oh, actually, we did that before the inspection. Forgot. Anyway, here we are cleaning up the pit.

Then it was sand, sand, sand.

And finally regular dirt on top.

Right now as I write this post, I am down in town waiting for the trailer to be loaded with free fill dirt. I met a guy through Craiglist. He had good quality fill dirt he needed hauled away, and we have need of dirt we don’t have to pay for. Win-win.

We decided that we wanted to pay for only what we have to (because despite the saying, dirt ain’t cheap!), so we devised a system where we put the purchased DG sand in the first foot or so up against the tank, then outside of that, we put either our native soil, or this other fill dirt that is not as high a quality.

I’d say by the end of the week, the septic tank will be completely covered. Yay! That means we can finally bring in the needed dirt to raise the ground level all around the house up to what it’s supposed to be.

And that is just one step closer to done.