My peeps with leach fields

stoneycakes

Do you make an effort to use "greener" detergents and soaps to help maintain it or do you just use whatever cleans the best?

Brandiewine11

I try to use the greener/phosphate free stuff whenever possible. I do use Tide on the CD's though. Otherwise I use method or 7th gen for dishes and laundry, and general cleaning. I use whatever I like for bath products.

ABColeslaw

We use Charlie's.  I mean yes, we always try to use green products, but when it comes to my CD's I'd use whatever worked best.  I am very happy with Charlies and our current wash routine. 

zaraceligon

For laundry and dishes, I use 7 generation. For personal use, for me I use shiseido shampoo and conditioner, my DH use head & shoulders shampoo, and for body the everyone soap ,body soap. For the hands I like method hand soap. For my kids I use the everyone soap, shampoo, and for soap I use the BM soap the I made for them. I also use a Japanese green tea face wash. For cleaning the bathrooms I like 7 generation tile and bath cleaner.for the toilet I like earth friendly products.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

stoneycakes

theultimatesak said:

we use the greenest version of whatever cleans best.  i use tide on clothes/diapers though.  i've never thought about it with my leech field to be honest.  most people around us have leech fields and DO NOT use green products, but I've never heard of an issue coming from it.  

That makes me feel a little better.  I've never had a leach field so it's all new to me.  The home inspector was telling us about how they last longer when you don't use stuff like bleach because you don't want to kill off the natural bacteria.  We already use a lot of green products, but I do use Tide, occasional bleach and switch back and forth between dish detergents. 

Unknown

This content has been removed.

countrycotton

I've got to share! A friend installs septic systems ( he put ours in) told me that instead of spending a chunck of change on ridx to put 1-2 cups of brown sugar and two packets of yeast in the toilet, let sit untill the yeast starts to activate then flush. He grew up on septic with his grandmother, she did this for fifty years and never had any septic problems. I've been doing since ours was installed, no problem got going on ten years.

PipSqueak0313

My only experience with a leach field is when we had one in AZ.....it must have been built too small by previous owners (older couple with grown children) because when I started doing laundry for a family of 4 it was causing our backyard to flood.....so we moved the washer and dryer to where the hook ups that went into the sewer system were located....never heard of one until we went investigating the flooding yard problem.

stoneycakes

countrycotton said:

I've got to share! A friend installs septic systems ( he put ours in) told me that instead of spending a chunck of change on ridx to put 1-2 cups of brown sugar and two packets of yeast in the toilet, let sit untill the yeast starts to activate then flush. He grew up on septic with his grandmother, she did this for fifty years and never had any septic problems. I've been doing since ours was installed, no problem got going on ten years.

This is a really cool idea.  I heard that RidX is nothing but yeast anyway. How often do you do it?

springbeduk2

I grew up hearing frequently that my parents seriously messed up the septic system bleaching the cloth diapers they used on me. So I'm pretty paranoid about bleach and almost never use it. Plus I prefer to avoid chlorine for other reasons. Probably also best to minimize use of antibacterial soaps though that's true in general - they can cause problems in municipal wastewater treatment systems too.

Other than those choice of "green" products is for other reasons not for septic/leach field.

If you're new to having a Leach field the other thing to know is you don't want trees and shrubs growing in it as roots clog the dispersal pipes. Unfortunately the previous owner of our house was really slack on that so we have a big project we keep procrasinating on. Grass and other non-food herbaceous plants are ok.

countrycotton

I do it about once a month. We have never had to drain our septic or have any work done one it. Our house is only 1 bath and we had a huge system installed for like a 3 bath house. If we ever do have to work on it, it will be a major pain! We have no access and would have to dig the whole thing up.