Septic tank - digging gardehn.

[endymion]

I put this on gardening but thought people here might know more.

I have a septic tank in the back garden ( its a large back garden. Its currently covered with grass but the stretch where the tank is is long and flatish ( slight slope to the right) and did have apple trees on it once nut those died several years ago. I was wondering if it was OK to dig up this section of land and put a garden in ? Would I be likely to disturb anything important ( like drains) by digging round and down from the septic tank for a garden bed about 100 ft long and 20 feet wide?

[Bob Minchin]

I can't imagine this would cause a problem you should have 3-4 feet of soil before you hit the main body of the tank. Lift the manhole cover and you should be able to see how far the neck goes down parallel before opening up into the various chambers.

Bob

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well my tank had a pipe from the outflow down about 18 "..

A lot depends on the tank design. Some will hope to treat the sewage and allow run off to go into a ditch. Thats frowned on these days as what comes out of a normal (non aerated) tank is far from pong free or bacteria free. Other designs used to be laid with I believe a herringbone pattern of pipes to diffuse the mucky outflow into the soil. These SHOULD be pretty deep.

All I can say is that the best thing I did was rip up the outflow pipe and fill in my septic tank. And replace with a Biodisc. Less space, less pong, and they let me dump the pong free outflow into a ditch.

Only problem is how fast the grass grows wher I filled it in. Loads of nutrients!

As long as you are not using a digger to go deep, a garden should be fine to dig however. Its unlikely you will smash any pipes with a spade.