House on septic tank Pros and Cons

[Gp G.]

What are pros and cons of house on septic tank rather than city sewer. Any investors has bad and good experiences with septic tanks and tenants rough usage? Please advise

[George W.]

Sewers arent everywhere and that's the pro to septic systems it allows you to still have a house where sewer simply isnt available/an option. I would take sewer over septic but I wouldnt run away from a property just because of a septic. Cost of installing a system is going to correlate to how good your soil percolates water. The worse the ground absorbs water the more expensive the system will be as a rule of thumb. 

my area is pretty much exclusively all septics and as a plumber I'm in and out of a ton of houses. Seldom does anyone have a major issue with their septic system.  

Also btw it's the drain/leachfield that usually fails and not the septic tank itself generally. If the tank is in good shape you can get away with replacing just the drain field most times. Good way to tell if the drain field is bad is if the ground is super green, mushy and swamp like in that area. Drainfields dont fail overnight. 

Just had a customer with a bad drain field recently, it was 0 degrees out and they still had a wet swampy, green patch of grass growing. The drain field simply wouldnt let any more liquids perculate into the ground. That gives the liquids in the septic tank no where to go to and backup into the house. 

Yes that was a decent sized job to change the drain field but when you consider that the original one was from the early 70s it had a pretty good run. 

90% of the problems I see with septics are clogs on the inlet baffle. Which is a relatively small job when you have the proper cleanouts.