Septic alarm

[Ron]

google3luo359,

If you take a picture of it, you can upload the picture to

for free, and you can get back a URL link to the picture that you could post here.

[google3luo359]

OK, I think I see where you are going with this. Because you didn't say what test I should do after, it wasn't clear.

Here's the story now.

As I mentioned, yesterday the alarm went off spontaneously* at around

4:30 pm for one minute. It was silent from then until today. Today it went off spontaneously at 10:32 am for one minute.

So yeah, I'm going to open the box today and investigate.

Here's my thinking. Tell me if I'm going in the right direction. I remove the alarm float wires going into the alarm box. I then do a continuity check of the alarm float wire. If there is a loop, then the alarm float is stuck ON. If there is no loop, the alarm float is OK (for now) and there must be an intermittent problem with either the wiring from the float to the alarm box, or somewhere in the alarm box.

My hunch now is the following. The alarm went off with a true positive a few days ago with the big rain we had. I silenced the alarm (just the red light was turned on) and it stayed like that for more than a day. At some point the water level went down (pump was working) but the alarm didn't turn off (stuck) despite the alarm float being in the off position. The 24 hr. + on, inside the alarm box must have fatigued it in some manner, and now it is 'flaky'.

spontaneously* =3D no rain, no water use in house

[willshak]

result

No, I don't have a pump, it's gravity fed. The tank and fields are lower than the lowest toilet in the house. How do I know when it needs pumping? The water leaving the toilet takes longer than usual and the plunger doesn't help. :-) I've only had the tank pumped out twice since the house was built 27 years ago. The last time was in March of 2003 when there was 4 of us living in the house. Now there's only the wife and I.