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After about 2.5 years (it's about twice that old, maybe a few years older via previous owner) I finally decided to see what was up with my cesspool. I grabbed a flashlight, popped off the thing, and peered down into it.
It was empty. Like completely empty, like it looked brand new. I turned some water on inside the house to see what would happen and low and behold I saw a small cascade of water going down into the pit. Perplexed, I duct taped my night vision camera to a 10' pole and lowered it down into the pit to have a look around. Other than a billion cockroaches I didn't see much else other than rock.
Is this normal? I was going to repeat the camera project at the end of a 20 foot pole but haven't got around to it yet. I'm not sure how deep the cesspool is but it appears to be about 30ish feet.
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Mine looked like that after about seventy years. Makes you begin to appreciate the need for septic tanks.
Assume the best and ask questions.
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Not much different than poking the pipe down a crack, seen plenty of that here.
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They all look like that here ! Everything you flush down your toilet eventually ends up in the ocean.
Hawaii is the only state that has not outlawed cesspools.
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Oh yes... the evil cesspool argument. This argument is based on the millions of cesspools typically dug into dirt where they only offered an environment of no oxygen and could only support anaerobic bacteria to do the job of breaking down the solid biological wastes left for them to survive upon. Which anaerobic bacteria cannot keep up with the waste load and eventually the hole or septic tank need to be pumped out. Below their leach lines they wold also clog up with sludge and even the anaerobic septic systems will fill wth sludge over time under the leach lines because they are substandard systems, period.
I will say this one more time. We do not have dirt here in most areas of Puna... we have ventilated rock.
A cesspool here naturally offers what has to be specially designed and made to aerate septic systems placed in dirt.
Our cesspools here offer natural oxygenated ventilation through the rock to support vigorously healthy aerobic bacteria. Not even the best of aerobic in ground septic systems offer a more oxygen enriched environment than what can be simply created by a covered hole here in our lava. Not even close!
The reason you find little to no waste in a cesspool here is not because it washes to the ocean but because the rich aerobic bacteria here decompose the material very rapidly here and as some have already noted, insect feed on the smaller insect and microbes that eat the waste.
A cesspool here in the rock is by far a much more effective system than the best in ground septic systems. Hands down! Why? Because it is a natural biological system that incorporates not only aerobic bacteria but also several variety of larger micro organisms as well as insects. You cannot improve on what nature has already mastered and at minimum you're more likely to screw it up.
The EPA would be wise to investigate what makes lava rock cesspools so effective here. There's a lot to learn in them there holes here. If any modifications are to be made in a lava rock cesspool it would be to add a depression of sand in the bottom and nothing more.
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Personally I would like the EPA to stop using lazy arguments to what may ail the shoreline while pointing to cesspools here. Rubbish.
First they need to investigate a number of operational lava rock cesspools here and catalogue the Bio system within them before leaping to assumptions. Then they need to look more closely at the shorelines here and explore other sources of contamination both natural and unnatural before blaming our lava rock cesspools.
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I think that is an oversimplification. I think that a cesspool, at least here in fractured lava, is a form of injection well. It does accomplish the needed task of preventing contact with the sewage by insects, rodents, people, and other surface dwelling creatures that might spread it around. Good so far. However a well designed septic tank and leach field eliminates surges, slows down the flow and spreads it out over a very great surface area of sand and gravel, all of which are in the uppermost and most aerobic layers. This a cesspool does not do. There is no way to calculate a retention time or to quantify the amount of aerobic action that has taken place, which by the way doesn't have to be very much. In places with a high water table it is sufficient to build a mound a few feet high (less than 5 feet) of sand and gravel for the liquid to trickle through which taking into account the 18" of cover leaves only 3 or 4 feet of soil to perk through but it does the job as long as the flow is a slow steady trickle, well spread out.
Cesspools can be a problem by the ocean. I don't think that the solids get very far through the fractured rock but the dissolved nutrients do as well as bacteria.
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Sludge build up in both anaerobic and aerobic septic systems is proven fact and the systems fail over time.
Any cracks that may carry away the water from the waste within a lava rock cesspool is still subject to the continued biological environment it was initially dumped in and would continue within an aerobic environment until it became leached as water into the rock where any further contaminates would be broken down. So it's still spread out and still subject to all the previous aerobic bacteria and insect conditions.
Obviously right next to the ocean this doesn't work but further back from the ocean it works perfectly.
ETA in heavy population density areas the lava rock cesspool may not be as safe merely because such an area can become too saturated... maybe.
On one acre parcels or greater, it's highly unlikely lava cesspools would ever pose a problem and would more likely be better than septic systems.
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quote:
Originally posted by Wao nahele kane
Oh yes... the evil cesspool argument. This argument is based on the millions of cesspools typically dug into dirt where they only offered an environment of no oxygen and could only support anaerobic bacteria to do the job of breaking down the solid biological wastes left for them to survive upon. Which anaerobic bacteria cannot keep up with the waste load and eventually the hole or septic tank need to be pumped out. Below their leach lines they wold also clog up with sludge and even the anaerobic septic systems will fill wth sludge over time under the leach lines because they are substandard systems, period.
I will say this one more time. We do not have dirt here in most areas of Puna... we have ventilated rock.
A cesspool here naturally offers what has to be specially designed and made to aerate septic systems placed in dirt.
Our cesspools here offer natural oxygenated ventilation through the rock to support vigorously healthy aerobic bacteria. Not even the best of aerobic in ground septic systems offer a more oxygen enriched environment than what can be simply created by a covered hole here in our lava. Not even close!
The reason you find little to no waste in a cesspool here is not because it washes to the ocean but because the rich aerobic bacteria here decompose the material very rapidly here and as some have already noted, insect feed on the smaller insect and microbes that eat the waste.
A cesspool here in the rock is by far a much more effective system than the best in ground septic systems. Hands down! Why? Because it is a natural biological system that incorporates not only aerobic bacteria but also several variety of larger micro organisms as well as insects. You cannot improve on what nature has already mastered and at minimum you're more likely to screw it up.
The EPA would be wise to investigate what makes lava rock cesspools so effective here. There's a lot to learn in them there holes here. If any modifications are to be made in a lava rock cesspool it would be to add a depression of sand in the bottom and nothing more.
Interesting. So it is being gobbled up by bacteria and larger critters before can even accumulate? Who'd have thunk it.
Ono - So Fast - So Tasty!
Ono - So Fast - So Tasty!
This was a great post on a topic most people never give any thought to. Even better, the arguments make perfect scientific sense and are not just ill informed ideological rants. My property uses a cesspool and I'm grateful someone had the curiosity to investigate this. Thanks.
Unfortunately, if you look at the insane proliferation of requirements for construction codes, land preparation 'environmental impact assessment', 'archeological assessment', 'architecture stamp', etc., all requiring lots of time and effort by highly paid professionals, it becomes apparent that the idea is to herd all of us into apartment complexes where we can be 'managed efficiently'. The way things are going, only the wealthy will be able to afford to build a new home larger than a shack to code.
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You can't fix Samsara.
