Failed septic system and energy monitoring update

In late April my septic system failed.  This constituted a household emergency and I had to scramble to get a new system designed and installed.  For those of you in the city unfamiliar with septic systems the sewage comes out of the house and goes into a large underground concrete storage tank that is typically 1000 gallons for a two bedroom house like mine.  Solids settle out in the tank and the liquids come out the other side and go to a leach field.  I have been doing proactive maintenance and having the tank pumped out every three years, but apparently the system was just so old that it eventually failed.  Where the pipe enters the leach field there is a distribution box that spreads out left right and center to feed perforated pipes buried under the ground.  When I exposed my distribution box I found that it was completely plugged up with gunk:

Distribution box opened up

In fact the entire pipe from the septic tank to the field was also plugged up.  From what I can tell this system was installed in the 1970s before the state required that records be maintained in the state house and local towns.  So I immediately hired a soils expert to design a new leach field ($550) which required him to come out and survey the land and test the soils figure out how big and what type of septic leach field to engineer for my location.  I took his design to my town office to get a permit approved for the construction of a new system and then put the design out to bid to local companies.

It turns out that my small town of Woolwich, population around 3300 has three family-owned  earthworks companies.  I ended up hiring Creamer and Sons Landworks.  Joe and his two sons started work in early June and it took them about seven working days to complete the installation, here are some photos:

Creating a berm around the Leach area

Crushed rock laid in.  The leach field pipes sit on top of this gravel.

They began by hauling off all the surface vegetation and dirt which they could later screen and process and bring back. Then they built up a berm out of sand and then loam and then installed the leach field inside the berm by laying down sand, then crushed rock then perforated pipe, then more sand, and then finally a layer of loam.  The town code officer approved the first step of the construction and later came back to approve the crushed rock installation as seen above. 

There were 5 ton and 10 ton trucks coming and going right through the middle of my lawn and at the end they put everything back with new dirt and grass seed and my new lawn is growing back in.  This whole project cost me over $21,000 and I had to refinance the house to pay for it.  They did an excellent job and I'm sure the system will last longer than I will!  Click here to see a blog post that links to two videos I made about the entire process.

Between the initial failure when I first had my septic tank pumped out to give me some time I had to pump it out a second time.  When they pump out just liquids they charge less - $250 compared to $350.  My housemate and I were able to dramatically reduce our usage of water by approximately 50% in order to defer further costly pump outs before the new system could be installed.

From an energy monitoring standpoint, I was able to clearly determine that we had in fact reduced our water consumption significantly by looking at the energy consumption of my 1500 W well pump which is down about 100 feet below ground in the granite.  Here's a screen from my Emporia energy monitoring app (see my previous post about this here) showing daily well energy consumption before and after extreme conservation measures:

Well pump energy

It looks like we reduced water consumption by approximately 50% and us guys were able to pee outside a lot since my property is rural and private.  Like many rural male Mainers I pee outside quite often anyway since it's an 80 foot walk to the house from my workshop that does not have plumbing.

After the septic system was installed I needed to run a sprinkler for an hour or so every evening to water in the grass and clover seeds I planted.  The contractors put grass seed and straw in the area where they replaced the existing lawn, and I elected to seed the whole septic area with white clover which is lower maintenance and good bee habitat. Clover is also a good nitrogen fixer that out competes weeds and grass.  

leach field planted with clover

sprinkler, and lawn  growing  back in

 The daily energy chart below shows a dramatic increase in my well pump usage to keep all that new loam nice and wet.

Well pump after septic installed

If I did not have a solar power system (38 panels producing a peak of over 8 kW) I would see a significant increase in my electric bill to run that pump so much.  Starting in mid-May, my solar energy production exceeds my needs and the utility allows me to bank my kilowatt hours as credit that I can use in the fall and winter.  The bottom line is that it is costing me nothing to run my well pump for hours!  The weekly energy chart for my entire property below shows that I was using a lot of energy to run my two heat pumps in the winter when I have much less sun here in Maine at the 43rd parallel.  As I get more sun and the weather warms up reducing the need for the heat pumps, eventually the solar starts producing a surplus in May.

weekly net energy consumption

My electric bills spiked up over $300 for a few months in the dead of winter mostly due to the heat pumps that I installed, but this is a lot less expensive than heating with propane as I had in the past.  But then from May through October, I will pay the utility just a connection fee of around $13 a month and I will use my accumulated credits to cover my energy use into November and December hopefully.

You can see a video about my recent installation of additional solar panels on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl8r-gZupfE

 I find myself checking energy use on the Emporia app every week or so to see what is using the most energy.  The biggest energy consumers are my (self installed) heat pumps, one in my house, and one in my workshop.  Here's a weekly chart of energy for my house heat pump:

It was working hard during the winter to keep my living/dining room area warm when temperatures remained below freezing for weeks at a time.  As you can see, energy use plummeted in May when I often shut it off completely, but now in late June I am turning it on for cooling but it uses a great deal less energy for that.