The poop tank

The septic fella showed up early one day (last month) to pump my poop tank. I was a little concerned about my septic tank since I had not had it pumped since I bought the house. Problems can start if you get solid waste sucked into your drainage lines. It can damage your leech field (the area of soil where the effluent, aka poop water, drains through the dirt) which can cause backups and overflow your toilet.

When you buy a house and have a septic you just can't know what you have in your tank. You can't check it like you do with your engine oil. Well, I mean you can if you hate yourself and absolutely don't want anyone to approach you for several days. If you're like me you have some poor soul that enjoys the finer things in poop to come out and pump your septic tank.

I guess the reason why I am blogging about this is that I found the major source of mosquitoes! My pooper man lifted the well caps to my septic system (its partially above ground) and, I joke not here, a thick cloud of mosquitoes "smoked columned" out of the septic system.

Now that last statement can give you an idea about the problem I have been having with the skeeters. If that didn't then let me give you and idea. One day I was cleaning the truck out. I happened to look down at my arm and, no joke, I had at least six skeeters on my arm and another nine or ten on my legs. To tell you that I had a skeeter problem is to devalue the magnitude of the problem. I can't tell you how many days during the summer I have spent spraying skeeter repellent and spreading cedarcide (organic mosquito repellent) only to have a few hours of not getting bitten.

So now that I know the source of my problem I can attack! I took some screen material (for screen windows) and covered my septic wells. I then wrapped bungee cords around the base of the well so that it holds the screen in place and tight against the brick (Yes, I have brick wells). For a final line of defense I took strip insulation and put it on the under side of my concrete well caps. I did this so it makes a seal around the well to hold the screen down flush with the brick caps.

To give you a sense of how well this worked, my son and I spent and hour squishing skeeters that got trapped in the screen. Well over a thousand blood suckers died......Skeeters, not the IRS. Its now a month or two later and I have seen TWO mosquitoes during that time. In fact the other night I was changing my truck tire. It took about three hours (another story for a later post) and not a single bite!