Case Studies

Blue Jay Estates is a 6 year old, gravity trickle-fed system with approximately 8 trenches installed in parallel with a common top and bottom header. It replaced a previous drainfield system which failed and backed up in the middle of winter. There are SepticSitter sensors in two of the trenches.

Mr. & Mrs. Green who have a gravity trickle-fed Infiltrator leaching chamber field consisting of about 6 lines installed in parallel off a common header. Two of our sensors were retrofitted to the drainfield last year along with inspection ports and green valve boxes to blend in with the lawn. The septic system was about 8 years old at the time.

Mr. & Mrs. Buns have a 15 year old, raised-bed, gravel drainfield. At the time of installation, the home was occupied by a family who had 2 to 3 school age children living at home. For the past few years, the home has only had 2 occupants most of the time – empty nesters who work during the day.
-Drainfield is a Nova Scotia style “Raised C2 Contour” (single trench 138 ft long x 4.5ft wide) bed.
-Distribution lateral is trickle-fed to the centre of the pipe.
-Approx. 2 feet of imported “good quality fill” was placed on top of the natural soil.
-Imported fill which was used to build up the bed met the PEI regulations for “Good Quality Fill”. It is a crushed sandstone material. This was very typical of what was used in PEI at that time (estimate 12% to 15% silt+ clay content).

Mr. & Mrs. Flowers have a septic system with a pump. There is a sensor in the pump tank and one in the EZ-Flow drainfield. Ideally, there would be a sensor in each drainfield line, but this site was already known to be having serious problems (it was overloaded and breaking out part of the year) when we did the retrofit, so they are waiting to redo the field before installing more sensors. During wet times of the year, the drainfield trench levels rise at the same time the pump tank doses