Owners of suburban areas and their own homes often prefer to equip cesspools for collecting wastewater. This design is quite cheap to maintain and even a person far from construction or sewer work can dig it out. However, homeowners often face stagnant water in the pit. In this article, we will consider the reasons for the appearance of such a problem, methods for its elimination and prevention.
How does the problem appear
Cesspools usually equip two types:
- With an open bottom - sewage penetrates the soil through the bottom of the pit or its walls.
- With a closed bottom (septic tank) - this type is emptied using a cesspool machine.
According to sanitary standards, it is forbidden to use a cesspool with an open bottom, since there is an environmental threat to the soil and underground water sources. However, it is still used in areas where there is no sewage system.
During operation, it is most often the open-type cesspool that overflows with water. However, the closed type also has such a disadvantage. Stagnation of water in a pit of any type is caused by a number of reasons:
- insufficient cesspool capacity, which was incorrectly calculated before its construction;
- the formation of a greasy film on the surface of the walls of the pit or the accumulation of silty deposits that interfere with the outflow of fluid into the soil;
- rising groundwater levels, melting snow or heavy rainfall;
- the pit is equipped on clay soil, which prevents the absorption of liquid into the soil;
- improper arrangement of the cesspool, in which the bottom of the cesspool is located above the freezing point of the soil, which leads to the formation of an ice crust that does not allow liquid to pass through;
- the walls and bottom of the pit are clogged with organic deposits, which are not processed quickly enough by bacteria.
How to fix it
To eliminate stagnation and pouring liquid out of the cesspool, the following methods are used:
- Pumping liquid using a cesspool machine. To do this, call the sewer machine, which will clear the pit from sewage, sludge and grease. All these masses are mixed with water and pumped out in several approaches for the best cleaning. This method is better to combine with others, since it is not always possible to pump out solid deposits on the walls of a cesspool with a pump.
- Mechanical cleaning of the pit. It is used after pumping out the liquid with a trap. When using this method, it will be necessary to clean off deposits from the side walls and the bottom of the pit with a shovel. Waste should be raised to the surface and disposed of. After cleaning, it is recommended that grease filters be installed in the septic tank to help reduce the amount of fat deposits. Mechanical cleaning will not take a lot of time, but you will have to put a lot of physical force, especially if deposits are poorly removed. In addition, this method in some cases is the only possible, for example, when placing a hole in the soil with a high clay content.
- The use of drugs of chemical origin. Household chemicals are well suited for cleaning cesspools. It has a specially developed chemical composition that can soften solid and viscous wastes, which can subsequently be pumped out efficiently with a sewage machine. Chemicals also eliminate odors and disinfect the pit. When cleaning cesspools, the following preparations are most often used:
- formalin is a disinfectant, it helps to stop the vital activity of bacteria and stop the decomposition processes in the cesspool;
- nitrates - environmentally friendly substances that soften sludge and biological waste, as well as eliminate unpleasant odors; nitrate cleaning should be done with all caution, since they negatively affect the metal surfaces of the pipes and can damage the iron parts of electric pumps;
- bleach - this substance has a high disinfecting ability, interacting with organic substances in the pit;
- ammonium salt cleaners - these compounds with nitrogen effectively dissolve organics, and in the presence of water turn into an alkaline solution, they also remove odors; however, ammonium salt cleaners should be used no closer than 20 m from the house, since their evaporation negatively affects human health and pollutes the environment.
- The use of drugs of biological origin (bacterial-enzymatic method of purification). This method is available for use only at ambient temperatures from 5 to 30 ° C, since the reproduction of bacteria at lower or higher temperatures is impossible. In this case, 2 types of bacteria are used to clean cesspools:
- aerobic - bacteria multiply with the access of oxygen, which is pumped with the help of compressors, as a result of anaerobes they feed on organic substances and process them into fertilizers;
- anaerobic - this type of microorganism processes organics into fertilizers without the access of atmospheric oxygen twice as slow as aerobes.
What to do to prevent a problem
You can prevent the formation of fluid stagnation in the cesspool using the following recommendations:
- Perform periodic cleaning of the pit using special equipment. Pumping frequency - 1 time in 6 months.
- In between cleaning with a special device, you need to use microbiological preparations, which include live bacteria. They will help soften deposits on the walls of the pit and remove unpleasant odors.
Summing up, it should be noted that the problem of overflow of the cesspool arises most often due to its improper design or untimely cleaning. Therefore, only solving these two problems will help to avoid unpleasant consequences caused by water retention in the cesspool.
