Pump takes are secondary tanks, connected to the septic
tank, with pumps placed inside to discharge to an elevated
drainfield or sand filtration treatment.
If your
system has a pump timer, the alarm will sound, should the design
capacity of the system be exceeded. If this happens repeatedly,
it can serve as a warning of excessive loading of the system.
During power failures, the wastewater cannot be pumped to the drainfield, and therefore will accumulate in the pump tank. You
should begin water conservation measures as soon as the power
goes out. Some systems using pumps are now equipped
with timers. The timer controls the number of times the pump
starts, and thereby manages how much effluent goes to the
drainfield in a 24 hour period. This ensures that the drainfield
only gets as much effluent as it was designed to handle. A timer/pump system will take care of itself
over time once the power comes back on if it hasn't been
overloaded with too much water (i.e., wastewater isn't backing
up into the house). In order to let your system catch up,
continue to conserve water for an additional day or two once
power is restored. If the high water alarm sounds when the
power comes back on, this will indicate that the effluent has
backed up into the emergency storage area of the pump tank. The
alarm can be silenced manually and will shut itself off once the
pump system has pumped the excess wastewater from the tank. If the power outage is extended (e.g. 6
hours or more), precautionary measures should be taken when the
power returns, to avoid flooding the drainfield with excessive
effluent.
After the power returns, switch the pump
back on and let it run for no more than 5 minutes, then turn the
pump off again. This manual switching should be repeated no more
than every six hours until the high level alarm is alleviated or
the pump switches off on its own. If there has been little water
use during the outage, the pump may automatically turn off
during the first manual switching. In this case the switch can
be left on.
fax (425) 432-4461