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Monday, April 18, 2011

How the septic tank works

How septic tank works.

A septic tank is a tank and maybe made of steel, fiberglass and concrete where sanitary waste coming from the toilet are being stored. Residential houses use tank made of reinforced concrete.

Another term for a septic tank is septic vault. Houses in the urban area make use of the installed sanitary sewer lines that can be found along the main and secondary roads.

Water coming from the use of toilet lavatory and kitchen sink is not allowed to go to the septic tank. They go directly to open or closed canal and after discharge in the storm drainage.


Septic tank is meant just for the storage of sanitary waste. The standard and common septic tank has three (3) compartments namely main tank, digestive chamber and the leaching chamber. You can find this type of septic tank in most residential houses. To give you a clear picture of how ordinary septic tank looks please see the second page of this blog. This sketch was done using MS Excel program.

The septic tank works like this. Sanitary waste coming from the use of water closet goes to the main tank including the water that goes with it. Solids remain in the main tank. When the main tank is already full and the water reaches the level of outlet pipe excess water will go to the digestive chamber. This water contains small particles that will be left behind at the digestive chamber. From the digestive chamber the water will go the leaching chamber where water are further filtered while passing to a pile of small diameter gravel. Finally the clean water goes out of the septic tank and directly goes to the road gutter down to the storm drainage.

The main tank has one inlet pipe and one outlet pipe. The outlet pipe goes to the digestive chamber. There is one outlet in the digestive chamber and this goes to the leaching chamber. Leaching chamber has one outlet pipe that goes to the road gutter.

This is more or less how the ordinary septic tank works. Hope you find my blog on this subject worth reading. And hoping that I have clearly answered your query about how it works.