Living on the Lake Superior Clay Plain - Possibly TMI*

Several years ago, probably 25 or more, I remember that my parents were talking to some friends who were interested in buying some land across the road from where my parents' house was located.  It didn't interest me very much back then because I had other things going on in my life, but I remember that the sale didn't go through because the soil on that piece of land didn't "perk."  Huh?

Fast forward to about six years ago and we were starting some preliminary plans for building our house here.  We knew that one of the first things we needed to do was to have the soil tested before we ever did any excavating for the building site.  The man doing the testing didn't even have to think about it - our soil was all clay - it doesn't "perk" or drain like other types of soil, so rather than a drain field septic system, we were going to have to have a holding tank.

[For more about our clay, left over from glaciers, that makes up much of the soil in this area, check out this site about the Lake Superior Clay Plain.  Interesting, but I find just about anything geological to be interesting.]

So, the first two things we ever had installed in planning for our house, both done on a cold weekend back in October, 2009, was the geothermal field for the heat and AC, and this 2500-gallon holding tank.  Why not install a larger one as long as were doing it, you might ask?  Because the truck that needs to come periodically (relative frequency depending on number of people in the house!), to empty the tank only holds 2500 gallons.  So before it's installed, it looks like this:

2500 gallon septic holding tank

Installed, covered, and a PVC line coming from the holding tank into the house, although the action usually goes house-to-tank!

From that weekend on, any decisions we made that had anything to do with water usage - toilets, bathroom fixtures, dishwasher or not, even what kind of toilet paper we buy - was made knowing we had only a 2500 gallon capacity tank out there in our yard waiting to receive what we send out.  And BTW, it's why we only have showers in our guest bedrooms and why only one person--our nephew--has ever used the one bathtub we have in our house.  But we have REALLY good showers!

And again, fast forward to last night.  We had friends here and after one of them used our guest bathroom...and flushed..., an alarm went off.  Rather disconcerting, yes?  It's not very loud until you get out to the mechanical room to turn it off.  But we are used to it and know that alarm means that the tank out in our yard -- under two or more feet of snow -- needs to be pumped out.  We have a couple hundred gallons of wiggle-room, so to speak, so we have a couple days space before total capacity, but we knew we were going to have to call our septic man.

Making the call to the septic man also takes some advance planning on our part.  First, the road back to where he needs to park must be plowed.  And that was done earlier this past week, but then it snowed another 5-6 inches yesterday.  So the road is not plowed as well as we'd like.  Then, we usually try to shovel out a path from where he parks over to where the tank is.  So that needed to be done by us today.

We start with where the tank is: - that's it, sticking out of the snow.  Those are deer prints in the snow.

And we had to clear out around the tank opening, and clear a path over to where he parks near that big spruce tree in the middle.  Those are also deer prints in the snow.

Below is the opening to the tank after we dug it out.  In the winter he usually has to bring a blow torch to get the lid off.  And he also needs the torch to make the connections between all the parts of the hose that connects to the truck.  Not a fun job - none of it!

So then we needed to make some kind of trail over to his truck.  The problem is that, at this point in the winter, the first foot or more of snow is like cement and really hard to carve a path into.  So on our snowshoes, we went back and forth several times until we thought it would be solid enough for him to walk on.  Here's our path:

We'll give him our snowshoes if necessary, but we think he's probably run into this problem already with his other rural customers this winter.

And a word about "rural," Port Wing does have a regular sewer system, but it stops about a quarter mile down the road.  We could have had it extended up to our house, but for a pretty steep price, and we thought we could pump a whole lot of you-know-what for that price.

And now I can look down just over the hillside to Larson Creek that is flowing somewhere under all that snow, or will be soon, and know that nothing we are doing is hurting that tiny tributary leading into Lake Superior.

*TMI - Too much information, but it's too late now!  :-)