Septic standing water on leach field

[palmerdh]

My husband noticed there was some standing water on our leach field today and we leaned down and smelled it - definitely septic odor. The ground is totally saturated right now. The system passed inspection just 6 months ago and the leach field is only 8 years old. Does this mean it has failed and if so, what can be done to fix it?

[INBCPE]

Check this link out for information:

http://doityourself.com/wells/ailingsepticsystem.htm

Now for a horror story.

I helped out a buddy a year ago who was looking to buy a house in western NJ. The house was only a few years old, but we noticed a lot of kookie add-ons that raised some eyebrows during the walk through. One of them was the use of two tanks in series between the foundation and leach field. That was odd to have that much tank capacity for a single family house. To make a long story short, the guy had built the house on a large piece of property a few years ago and wanted to retire to Florida. He wanted to subdivide the lot and sell the house. Anyway, we took one look at the frozen blackwater and had a real insector come in. Sure enough his system was clogged to the gills. Turns out the property had a super shallow water table and never perked properly. So my buddy backed out, the developer who wanted the land backed out, and the inspector was forced by law to report the problem as a hazardous spill to the township. The town gave the owner 48 hours to fix the problem or have his CO yanked. "Fix the problem" meant a $30,000 mound system. He moved to Florida but last I heard he hadn't been able to sell the house.

[palmerdh]

Hmmm...I don't like that horror story! Hope our problem is way less serious.