How often should our septic aerator run during a day

The pumping question depends on your local codes. In our area, a brand new tank is good for 5 years before it needs to be pumped. A non-new tank must be pumped every 3 years. This is pretty typical.

I would say that tank monitoring will vary depending on your system. A septic tank is a pretty simple system. You have a primary tank (some call it a settling tank) that settles any solids out of the wastewater, and where most of your breakdown occurs (a well operating system will have natural occurring bacteria that do a good job of breaking down "solid" waste). As an aside, this settled goo is the majority of what is pumped out when the pump guy comes.

Usually, there is a second tank that is gravity fed, where the now "grey water" flows. From here, the grey water sits for a while (more breakdown occurs here) and it either feeds by gravity to a drain field, where it filters through the ground, or, it is pumped to a mound/elevated drain field.

In a simple non-pump system, you want to watch out for clogging in the outlets to the secondary tank and to the drain field. This can be done pretty easily- when you have the manhole covers replaced, ask the guy doing the work for you to tell you how for down from the top of the manhole, the drain is. Now, as often as you want, put a stick down the manhole, and see how deep the water is. If the water is above the drain, you have a blockage, and it should be serviced.

If you have a system with a pump, I'd highly recommend getting an alarm if one isn't installed already. The alarms will alert you if the level of the water goes above a specified height, which indicates a clogged pump or filter.

My recommendation would be to do your own monitoring (checking water level) as often as makes you comfortable, and have a scheduled service every 2-3 years.

More important than monitoring however, is making sure you are diligent with prevention. Use as little toilet paper as is practical, and stay away from quilted TP. Additionally, nothing but toilet waste, water, and TP should EVER go down your drains (the exception to this is if you have a food disposer, but even then, I'd use the disposal sparingly). Also, try not to use too harsh of chemicals when doing cleaning of your sinks/toilets/showers, and NEVER use draino.. there are cleaning products that are septic friendly, and septic friendly drain de-cloggers. Use them. This keeps the bacterial ecosystem breaking down your waste, nice and happy, which is a good thing.

I just had a breakthrough in my situation in the last couple of weeks. My leach field was about 95% clogged, very little if any movement. I had already diverted the graywater to another solution, which helped for awhile, but slowly the field failed to the point of essentially total failure. I have a single septic tank and wanted to try aerating it without the cost of a second tank. I learned a number of things that I haven't seen explicitly explained on any of the forums so I wanted to put it here to hopefully help someone.

I installed my aerator a few months back. Too much air volume and placing it in the center of the tank caused to much churning and cause solids to exit the tank. I did notice the smell though went from putrid to a smell like freshly turned soil (not coincidentally; the same aerobic bacteria live in airy soil). I spent a couple months thinking it didn't work. Water still not going out. But in the last couple of weeks I'm actually seeing the water levels fall to STAY at the edge of the outlet pipe!!!! First time ever!! I used the techniques below to avoid replacing my field without buying a $1000 solution.

You CAN aerate a single tank, but it's imperative that the aeration process doesn't agitate the incoming solids. They have to come into the first baffle and separate so the lighter material can rise and heavier solids fall. To accomplish this you have to use very fine bubbles and they have to be generated as far from the incoming line as possible, or they have to act inside an isolation vessel (there are videos where people use 12" pipe to contain the aerator). You can get diaphragm diffusers for as cheap as $35 if you search around, connected to PVC pipe, and use an air valve to supply JUST ENOUGH air pressure/volume to activate the diaphragm (air RELIEF valve, not cutoff. You'll damage your pump if you restrict airflow inappropriately). Too much and you get a rolling torrent (which you don't want). Place this diaphragm(s) near the output baffle or let it work IN the output baffle. This allows all the agitation to happen away from the settling part of the tank. THIS IS THE KEY, and is the reason why a separate aeration tank is ideal, so there's no chance of agitating the incoming. Also I had a 4" TEE on the outlet side which served as the separator. I put the two diaphragm diffusers on EITHER SIDE of the outlet TEE. You don't want bubbles going up INTO the TEE which could siphon some debris up in there. I got a septic filter brush and put down in the pipe to help filter the effluent, though as clear as the water is going out I don't think it was necessary.

One suggestion I received from a local contractor for my single concrete tank was to empty it, get inside and build a cinderblock wall giving 2/3 incoming/settling, and 1/3 aeration, but the tank has to be pretty good size to do that. You need several hundred gallons of aeration space. I put this on the burner as a next option, but turns out it wasn't necessary.

If you have a way of opening the other end of your leach lines to extend your field, at least temporarily, you get this freshly energized aerated bacteria through there quicker to let it go to work. My temporary relief is now closed off and the field appears to be working!!

Note I did NOT need to buy super duper amped up bacteria to add. From everything I've read this is hogwash and money makers for people. That's like buying weed seeds; give dirt some rain and you'll get the weeds. The bacteria will fill the space if they have oxygen.

My findings confirm for me that the low agitation solutions available out there for $500-$1000 would certainly work. I just chose to play around with a DIY solution.

Hope this helps someone.