Just wanted to share my experience with my septic system and a note of thanks to Grizz for sharing some knowledge.

My system has been in service for 24 years. I am the original owner as I had it installed when I constructed the house in 1990.

The system has an 800 hundred gallon dual chamber tank split 2/3 black water, 1/3 effluent. There are tees on the inlet and outlet with extensions. The line out to the bed is 65 feet long. The weeping bed itself is a filter media bed with 4 runs of 15 foot long 4 inch diameter PVC weeping pipe spaced 42" apart. It is a mound design mostly chosen because the clayey soil is any where from 3 to 12 inches deep over limestone.

The tank is actually at ground level due to the height of the bed, so accessing the clean out lids is relatively easy

The tank has been pumped every 7 or 8 years with the septic dude saying the sludge was never really more than 30% of the level.

It had been working well until this past February when the pipe from the house to the tank froze solid. It was a cold winter. I went to work thawing out the line using a hose with hot water first from the house side, then the tank side after thawing out the access hatches.

The fun had only just started. There was a 1 inch layer of ice in the black water side. Not too big a deal as water could still flow in. There was a 5 inch layer of ice on the effluent side however and the outlet Tee was encased and blocked. A big issue. I tried the thawing trick but seemed to get stuck at a joint or something about 2 feet from the tank. The septic pumper could not get to the house due to the snow and narrow country lane. I needed a workable temporary solution which was to break a hole in the ice and pump out enough effluent so I could use the system.

Since I live on an acreage well away from neighbors I pumped out about 200 gallons at a time which gave me 10 days or so of relief. The effluent really stunk of sulphides so I was glad it was winter and the windows were closed!

I did a lot of research and came across Grizz's blog and posts and decided to try a few things.

I reduced my water usage by letting the toilet mellow, showered only every 3 days and only did 3 loads of laundry a week. This helped.

I added 1 Lb of yeast and some Sugar to the black water side to try and kick start some bio activity. Probably a waste of money.

I looked at aerating the effluent side and after a few false starts managed to get a bit of success with a low volume fish tank pump and 3 stones. I suspended them from a PVC tube half way in the tank and after 2 weeks the effluent was far less smelly and actually went from black to relatively clear. This also kept the ice from building up on the effluent side which made the pump out easier. I think I only needed to do 5 in total since the water seemed to flow to the bed by mid April.

I have a friend who does septic installs as well as heavy equipment work, so last week we dug up the line to the bed as I had noticed a greener spot in the lawn on the run out to the weeping bed. What we found was very bad and probably in place since the system had been installed. The pipe from the tank was kinked 3 feet away from the outlet on the tank resulting in a 6" drop and rise in the line. There were two 45 degree angles to offset the line so it would run to the septic bed and where the green patch in the lawn was there was a hole in the pipe that the installer had covered with a roofing shingle. Nice. On top of all that, there was almost zero fall to the bed due to all the ups and downs in the line. At the bed entrance T there was a distribution line where we found one of the 4 weeping runs was completely dry due to the fact it was 6 inches higher than the others. It's amazing it even worked at all let alone 24 years.

After having the tank completely pumped out, four of us went to work and replaced the entire line, installed an access riser at the bed entrance, cleaned out all the weeping lines which were clogged with mix of black organic gunk and sand and installed a filter on the outlet T at the tank. I have poured a 20 gallon treatment of 10% hydrogen peroxide solution into the weeping bed to kick start the organics breakdown and will do another treatment in 4 days or so.

The worm population looked healthy but I may try and find some to add to the soil over the bed.

It will also take a while until the water level in the tank reaches the outlet, so I will wait before reinstalling the low volume aeration system to give the solids some settling time.