septic systems...

anybody have any creative ideas for a septic design to work with high water table? I bought my property about 3 years ago with the idea that we could divide it and build another house on the property. We have everything lined up except our septic system. First the county told me I need 6 holes with at least 24" dry soil. Got it. Should be good right? No. They tell me they don't like the color of the soils so they want to perform a "wet season review" so they come out in the middle of winter and check again and I need 12" of dry soil. Well, I only had 1/6 holes meet this requirement. I had a couple at 6" and 8" and the rest were pretty much right at ground level.

Any ideas would be appreciated. I live in Washington State if that makes a difference.

Sand Mound systems are used in rocky areas where there is very little soil... Maybe an option for you since the majority of your work is done by evap anyway...

http://ohioline.osu.edu/aex-fact/0744.html

Have very dense clay soil in my area, our system is a three tier with a sand mound and leech field area, about as much as I know but the sand is the key

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_treatment_system

I have an aerobic system and it works great. No need for a leach field. My system has three buried tanks with two sprinkler heads in the yard where it is discharged as effluent water. I don't know if this type system is accepted where you live, but they are very efficient and you can water part of your yard with the discharge water.

does anybody know if I were to cover my entire yard with a foot of soil, would the water table raise up into the new surface? I wonder if I still need 12" of water table to even propose an alternative system and since I don't have that, it may be worth my while to raise my ground level. I was doing some numbers and it would prob cost about 25k to cover my acre with 1 foot of soil, but if it would work, it would create prob at least 75k equity in an additional building lot...

would you need to cover the entire area in a foot of soil?, why not just the leach field area. My lake lot neighbor uses an aerator system for his septic. Its basically a big 3 chambered tank with some aerater pumps in it. According to him, once the water fills and exits the the last chamber, its been cleaned and spills out into a overfow pipe to leach down into the ground.

I was just considering covering the entire thing because it would raise up entire yard instead of creating these rolling mounds in 6 different spots. I'm not quite sure it would work though...