With more than 30 years of experience in the construction business, businessman Clarke Watson has become an expert in the Scottsdale, Arizona, area. As owner of Advanced Septic Solutions, Watson has helped hundreds of homeowners install and repair their residential septic systems. In this article, he explains the signs that a septic tank has cracked.
When someone asks how he can tell if his septic tank has a crack in it, the short answer is that he can’t. From the standpoint of someone standing above the ground looking down, there is no way to visually see or find out whether a crack in the tank is the cause of your septic problem.
To really figure out what is causing your problem, and whether a cracked tank is to blame, you would have to dig up the tank, expose the manhole covers, and look at its liquid capacity. The liquid should be 6 to 10 inches from the top of the tank. And if that is not the case, if the liquid is lower, then that probably means that you have a crack.
If you do have a crack, then you need to pump out the tank in order to find that crack and fix it. That is going to be the only solution to the problem.
Oftentimes, though, people think that they have a crack in their tank because the soil around the tank is wet. But that could also be a breach in the leech line, as well. It really depends on your soil condition. In other words, if leaking is going on around the tank, then yes, there will be wetness around the vicinity of the tank.
What is more common, though, is that the wetness on a homeowner’s lawn is caused by a problem with his leech line. Unless you are putting a lot of water into the area around the tank, then the tank itself doesn’t typically get the soil surround it wet. But, if the area around your tank does get wet, you could have either a backup or a cracked tank.
We try to calm most customers by explaining that it is rare that a cracked tank is what is causing a homeowner’s soil to become wet. It is a lot more likely that the problem is being caused by a backup in the leech line, and that is usually a problem that is much easier—and cheaper—to solve.
