The "septic" drama

Incase you missed the little tidbits of "septic" information in the past 9 months I am going to give you a recap:

• February 2009-finally decided to buy an Envirolet composting toilet instead of building a dry toilet.
• March-went to courthouse to make sure toilet is "legal" and found out they don't care, but we can't use a greywater system, still need to put in a spetic system.
• March-inspector came out to lay out and design septic system and decided she needed the soil scientist from Knoxville to help her.
• April-Still waiting for the soil Scientist to schedule his visit.
• May-Soil scientist said we need an interceptor drain-big deep trench filled with gravel all the way around the septic field. The excavator comes and decides he needs to talk with the inspector because the way the land lays it is impossible to do what they want him to do.
• June-waiting again for an appointment that will bring together 3 very busy people. The county inspector only works in this county on Tuesday and Thursday. The soil scientists from Knoxville only comes south one week a month. It makes it really hard to get them together. I am glad I am not in charge of that.
• July-finally they have a plan. I mowed the whole clearing and tried to keep it as short as possible so they could see how the land actually lays when they come. **remember I am mowing with a push mower**. Now it needs to stop raining so they can dig it up.
• August-waiting for our turn on the long list of clients the excavator has.
• September-too much rain to dig, but we are next when it stops.
• October-too much rain to dig, but we are still next.

Now it is November. It has been 9 months since I first went to the courthouse. We were going to just use the septic as a water cistern, but have decided since we had to go to such a large expense and we don't have a really good place for a greywater system, we would just hook all the drains up to it. The house is close to finished, we had a goal to move in the house in the beginning of December (pushed back due to....rain getting in the way of work....again). Now it is the end of November and we still haven't started the septic.

They started the interceptor drain on the 20th, it was finished on the 21st and today it was inspected and passed...finally! Now they can dig the field lines and place the tank. Out of all the work we did and schedules we had to align, this was the only thing that caused me near panic.