A Little Flooding

The phone call did not do it justice. On Sunday afternoon the builder called to tell us that his employee had called him to tell him that because of the tropical storm Fay, we might have a problem with the septic tank we have been working on. So on Monday morning we all met out at the Ranch to see just what the situation was. Danny and I had both suspected that the tank was full of water and might need to be drained, and that perhaps the hole that the tank sat in was also full of water that would recede. We were only partially right - which in this case was like being totally wrong!

Imagine, if you will, a huge cement block structure attached to 8 inches of rebar reinforced cement slab. Now imagine it floating like Noah's ark! I had no idea anything that weighed that much could float.

The problem is that a lot of mud is now under that floating structure, and the septic tank itself is no longer level. All of that presents challenges. We have our engineer working on a solution. His degree is actually in civil engineering so hopefully he'll know exactly what needs to be done and how and when. Right now the master builder and our farm worker are not in agreement about what should be done. (I think we'll go with the builder on this one until the engineer tells us something different!)

Here are a couple of photos for you so you can get an idea. The first one is the septic tank when it was still in the hole where it belongs and the following two are from yesterday morning after the rains. Notice that in the first one the top of the blocks is below dirt level. In the two flooded ones the top is about a foot above. Perhaps a bit more.