Your septic tank is the unsung hero of your home. While you busy yourself with day-to-day activities, it keeps all of your waste away from your home, ensuring that your home is odor and waste free. Since your septic tank works so hard for you, it’s important to treat it with kindness and care. In today’s blog, the septic specialists at B&B Pumping will cover a few items that should never go into your septic tank.
The Worst Things To Put Into Your Septic Tank
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Treating Your Septic Tank Right
For the most part, your septic tank can handle the regular waste that you put into it. It can also handle other related materials like toilet paper, but it’s no trash can! It’s important to put only waste and toilet paper into your septic tank, and to avoid these other materials.
Grease
After making some tasty bacon, or grilling up some burgers, avoid the temptation to pour all that grease down your drains. Grease doesn’t break down the same way that human waste does, and it is very difficult to remove from your pipes. Over time, and with more grease, you can actually line your pipes with grease and create blockages that can lead to other problems. Eventually, your septic system could backup because waste and water isn’t able to move through your grease clogged pipes! This will lead to costly and extensive repairs to your septic tank, your home plumbing, and maybe any kitchen or bathroom fixtures that were on the receiving end of this backed up system.
Rather than pouring grease down your drains, pour them into a glass jar, or empty tin can, and keep it in your freezer. When the can or jar is full, you can throw it away. To minimize as much grease in your pipes as possible, make sure to wipe down your greasy pots and pans with paper towels before washing them in the sink.
Hazardous Chemicals
While some systems use a chlorinator to disinfect your treated water before recycling it through your sprinklers, that doesn’t mean you should pour any other chemicals down the drain. Heavy chemicals like bleach, motor oil, and rat and bug poison can damage your septic tank in ways you didn’t expect. Your tank is full of helpful bacteria that break down your waste and keep your system running smoothly. These chemicals will only kill off these helpful bacteria. The result is that solid waste collects more quickly in your system, making it necessary for you to have to arrange for septic tank pumping services. Not only will your tank suffer, but the environment around your home will suffer too. These chemicals can leach out of your tank and into your soil and surrounding groundwater. This can make the area around your tank hazardous to be near!
Dispose of these chemicals properly by following directions on the bottle, or check with your local garbage facilities or health department to find out more.
Most Kitchen Scraps
It’s tempting to just dispose of your leftovers by stuffing them down your kitchen drain, but your septic tank doesn’t want your leftovers either! You might need to avoid using your garbage disposal, and instead throw your leftover food scraps away. That includes things like egg shells, banana peels, and coffee grounds. If you don’t want these food scraps to stink up your home or garage, now might be the perfect time to set up a compost heap in your yard. You can use this composted material as fertilizer for your lawn and garden. Your landscaping and your septic tank will thank you!
Really Anything Other Than Waste and Toilet Paper
We’re not kidding when we say this, but don’t clutter up your septic tank with trash! Your septic tank is really only designed to handle your human waste and the toilet paper you use to clean up. When we respond to septic tank maintenance calls, you’d be surprised by the garbage and the number of weird items we find in customer’s septic tanks. Diapers, cigarette butts, cat litter, and sanitary napkins don’t belong in your septic tank. You can keep your septic tank “clean” by only filling it with human waste.
Schedule Septic Tank Maintenance Today!
If all of this knowledge is new to you, and you’re suddenly very nervous about the state of your septic tank, don’t panic. B & B Pumping offers septic tank pumping and septic tank maintenance services to those in Fort Worth, Decatur, Azle, Haslet, and Weatherford — feel free to take a look at our service area. We can help keep your septic tank running flawlessly, call us today.