Septic system maintenance

When we first moved into our house at Nanango we thought we should probably get the septic pumped out, this went on the list of things we should do and quickly ended up near the end as we found more and more urgent jobs that required our attention. Finally, 18 months later, with the evaporation trench getting a bit soggy, we decided it REALLY was time to get it pumped out and booked in a contractor.

a typical septic arrangement

Septic systems come in a few different shapes and sizes, ours is a large underground plastic tank, which all our waste water flows into. The solids are supposed to sink and the liquid drains out of an opening near the top (but underground) and into a large evaporation trench (attractively located in our house yard!). The evaporation trench should be a gravel-lined shallow pit, with grass etc growing on top, in which the pipes branch out so that the water can spread out and evaporate (also called the leach field). Its pretty hard to tell whether or not its working as designed, and according to this report, many systems are not working because people don't know how to maintain them.

The "suck-truck" operator was very knowledgeable on the subject and gave us a few tips. He said that the tank should be sucked out about every 3 years or so to remove the accumulated solids, this depends on the size of the tank and the number of people using it. If the solids build up to the top of the tank and start to be transported into the evaporation trench it will eventually block up and you will have to dig up the whole thing and start again. Not to mention the potential for pathogens to accumulate near the surface of the trench.

He also told us not to use any chlorine. This will just kill the microbes that are working to break down the sludge and it will have to by pumped out more often. Some toilet cleaning products claim to be "septic safe" while still containing chlorine, so he recommended to use natural cleaning products (bicarb soda and vinegar) instead. Just another reason to ditch the chemicals! The only bleach we use is in cleaning the beer fermenters, so that is now being tipped outside instead of down the drain.

So if you have a septic system that hasn't been pumped out for a while, its probably worth getting a suck-truck out to do the job, then at least you know you're not going to block up your trench and have expensive repair work instead! The other advantage for us is that most of our grey water goes to the garden instead of filling up the septic tank.

Do you have a septic tank? Any tips for maintaining it?

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here . You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!). I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months. I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post! New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog. I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people. I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts. I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo. Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about chicken tractor

How to make soap with beer (and tallow)

I may have mentioned this before.... soap making is addictive! Once you start, you just want to keep making more soap. And not the same soap, you want to try all sorts of different soaps. I made the mistake of joining a facebook group called Saponification Nation and now my facebook newsfeed is full of glorious soaps, in all colours and shapes, which makes it even harder to resist the urge to experiment. One soap that kept popping up a few weeks ago was soap made with beer. I generally prefer not to use ingredients just for the sake of it, I like to know that they are adding something to the properties of the finished soap. As you know, I don't like to use artificial ingredients either (colours or fragrances). When I read about beer in soap I found out that beer adds sugar to the mixture, which increases lather. I use tallow in my soap, which has limited lather, so anything that adds lather could improve the soap. It also contributes a tan or brown colour to

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