The Time I Met Orangeburg
The septic system is the silent joy of any country home and my place is no exception. As any Midwesterner will tell you water comes in from the water lines water and goes out through the sewer and waste lines – any deviation from that is a bad thing. That brings me to a day in the early summer four years ago when the sewer lines got confused about their jobs and I wound up ankle deep in sewage while taking a shower. Being a country boy this was my problem to fix – not a city or utility problem.
The washing machine brought to my attention an issue with the septic system – when it drained the septic wasn’t keeping up and that was the sign for me there was a major problem. I have the septic tank pumped out every few years and to me it was kind of a head scratcher. I never an issue quite like this and it shouldn’t be full and yet here we are. So I made a call to a septic company to get it pumped.
I’m going to pause for a moment and make a footnote in this story – most houses come with an intelligence test built into their waste line system. Any county living Midwesterner will tell you if your septic tank is full don’t open the waste cleanout line in your basement or crawl space. I will let you guess why. Just some wisdom passed down from generation to generation out here. You’re welcome.
After I dug out the lid of the tank in the yard I had the septic tank pumped out. Did it fix the issue? Unfortunately no which now had me worried – septic issues can get expensive in a hurry out here. I checked and there weren’t any wet spots in the yard but there is one Maple tree not too far from the septic so maybe it had something to do with it. The septic company came out again and that’s when the real digging started.
For those of you who don’t know Orangeburg is a type of sewer pipe that was popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s. What made this pipe unique was what it was made out of. Unlike most pipe which often, a metal like cast iron, or plastic like ABS or PVC, Orangeburg pipe is made up of tar and wood pulp. If you have heavy soil it isn’t ideal because if the ground doesn’t drain well and the pipe can break down – it does anyway. Lucky for me I’m on sand the lot drains good which is helpful but… it’s still Orangeburg pipe. The issue however in my case wasn’t that the pipe had rotted away but rather the nearby Maple tree had roots which crushed the pipe going from the house to my septic tank.
It’s never a good sign when you see the guy hired to fix it is out there with a pick axe, then a double bitted axe and then a Sawzall pounding away on something and all you can see is head from out of the trench he dug. Ultimately he cut out 4 roots about the diameter of my arm – three on the pipe going from the house to the tank and one going out of the tank. Ultimately I had all the Orangeburg replaced with PVC.
Since everything was all ripped up and it wasn’t going to be cheap at this point anyway I asked the guy working on it what would make life for the next guy that would need to service the system. He said that if it was his place he would put a cleanout T between the septic tank and the house out in the yard and a riser (like a manhole and cover) at the tank so that when the septic needs to be pumped in the future they wouldn’t need to dig up the yard to find it – just pop the cover and the tank lid is right there. I had him do it and I haven’t had any problems since. In the meantime I hope you never have to meet my friend Orangeburg.
Peace Always,
Lester