Low Pressure from the Well

A reduction in pressure from the well can have several causes:

1. the well going dry,
2. a leak or blockage in a pipe in or from the well
3. a pump problem
4. a pressure tank or pressure switch problem
5. an electrical problem (pump is running on 120 instead of 240)

Failure of the well itself is rarely sudden; generally there is a slow deterioration. However, during a drought it can seem to happen suddenly when the storage in the well itself is used up in the normal course of the day. If you have water at normal pressure first thing in the morning or when you get home from work, but the pressure seems to fall or the water run out after a little while, then you may have a groundwater supply problem.

While many wells will last decades, over time the amount of water a well yields can decrease. That can be caused by the water table falling due to extended drought, increased use or increased ground cover with roads, driveways, patios and houses in the recharge area. Mineral encrustation and reducing bacteria (often called iron bacteria) buildup can also decrease well recharge by plugging of holes in the well screen, plugging the piping or the filling of openings in the geologic formation itself. According to Penn State Extension the fall in well yield over time can be caused by changes in the water well itself including:

1. Encrustation by mineral deposits
2. Bio-fouling by the growth of microorganisms
3. Physical plugging of groundwater aquifer by sediment
4. Well screen or casing corrosion
5. Pump damage

To provide a reliable supply of water at an adequate pressure for extended use, a drilled well must recharge at a rate greater than the typical domestic demand of 3-5 gallons per minute or have enough storage in the well itself to supply the demand. Each foot of a typical six inch well, has almost a gallon and a half of storage so that a 100 foot of well has 147 gallons. The crudest test of the well itself is to see if you can run it dry. My well is only 150 feet deep, but the static water level has fallen over the years to 43 feet below grade so running the hose (which draw about 3 gallons per minute) should draw down the well in about an hour. I ran the hose for 16 hours back in the spring an never ran it dry. It recharges faster than I was drawing water.

Even on the deepest home wells it would only take 5-6 hours to know if your well is not recharging fast enough and you can run your well dry. If you have more than about 150 gallons available in well storage it is generally enough to supply small household needs till the well can recharge. At that point it is more likely an equipment or system problem. You can potentially repair an encrustation problem (see https://greenrisks.blogspot.com/2020/03/keeping-your-home-supplied-with-water.html)

Equipment problems are the most common well problems. The first step is to check the equipment. The components of a modern drilled well system likely to impact pressure are: a submersible pump, the piping which can develop a leak or become clogged, a pitless adaptor,  the pipe to the house and the interior water delivery system including the pressure tank and pressure switch.

If your water supply has lost pressure, and seems to be drizzling out of your faucet or showerhead at all times, your problem could simply be a loss of pressure in the pressure tank or damage to or a leak in the bladder in the pressure tank. So start in the basement. The components within the basement provide consistent water pressure at the fixtures in the house and the electrical switch that turns on the pump. The pump moves water to the basement water pressure tank, inside the tank is an air bladder that becomes compressed as water is pumped into the tank. (There are other types of pressure tanks that do not have a bladder and a constant pressure pump does not need a pressure tank, but those installations are not as common.)

The pressure in the tank moves the water through the house pipes so that the pump does not have to run every time you open a faucet. The pressure tank typically maintains the water pressure between 40-60 psi or 30-50 psi for smaller tanks. After the pressure drops below the cut in pressure (typically 30-40 psi), the electrical switch turns on the pump and the pressure in the tank increases as the tank fills. If however, the pump is not delivering water fast enough the pressure tank could fail to regain its head while the water is in use. The pressure switch could also be the problem; it could be cutting in at the wrong pressure.

The first two things to check are the pressure in the pressure tank and your circuit breakers to make sure that the problem is not electrical. You can check the pressure on most pressure tanks with a tire gauge and the valve on the top. (Be sure to cut the power to the system and open a faucet to drain the tank before you measure the pressure. While the water is running out of the tank check the pressure on the pressure gauge, to make sure it is dropping and the pressure gauge is working). After thatyou’re your tier gauge to checking to see that the pressure in the tank is a couple of psi below the cut-in pressure set on your pressure switch. (Most are set to 38 psi for the 40-60 psi tanks.) When you unscrew the cover over the valve if water leaks out, your pressure tank bladder has failed, and it’s time to buy a new one.

The electrical switch in front of the the pressure tank (grey box under the gauge) turns on the pump. It is probably working since you have water, but check it anyway. Check the voltage before and after the switch just to make sure. When the pressure in the pressure tank falls to 40 psi (30 for small tanks) the switch at the pressure tank turns on the pump. Also, you can get what is essentially a vapor lock and the tank may simply need to be drained, bleed and recharged. Before you do that check to make sure that the tubing to the valve is not clogged.

When you turn the pump back on make sure that both circuit breakers are flipped to the on position. If there is a short in the pump system it can blow a single circuit. The pump can operate this way, but not very well. So turn off and on the pump’s circuit breakers or change the fuses. Pumps generally have two circuits tied together because an immersion pump draws a lot of power (240 volts). Make sure both circuits are on- a small water drizzle is one sign of a 240 volt pump getting only 120 volts. (If you know how to do it check the amperage across the pump to make sure it is steady and within range see the chart below from Franklin Electric.) In most cases the pump operates near the maximum load.

Time to look for problems outside. The pipe to the house or the pitless adaptor might have cracked. If like me your pipe runs under a portion of the driveway, this turns out to be a fairly expensive, but simple fix-excavating the pipe and replacing it. Look for signs that a pipe outside of the well is leaking, sinking ground, cracks in the driveway vegetation that looks a little too lush. If you end up replacing the pipe, make sure you slope it properly. If the horizontal well piping between well and building does not slope continually upwards or if it has a high spot, an air lock can form in the piping, so make sure if you end up replacing the pipe that it is properly slanted and not just a fixed depth below surface. The piping in the well itself can also develop leaks over time that can diminish flow.

If you do not see a leak from a pipe outside the well, you are going to have to look at the pump and equipment in the well. At this point, you are going to need help to identify the problem. It is more than a one man (or woman) job to pull a pump. Shallower pumps can be pulled by hand if you are a big, strong and young guy, but special equipment is necessary to pull a deeper pump even for a big guy in great shape. Call a well driller or a well repair company. The well drilling companies can generally replace, pumps and pressure tanks and other well components. In addition, they can diagnose an improper well design. Private well construction was not regulated in Virginia until the 1992 (though Prince William County had well regulations going back to 1979). I have seen some very odd well designs over the years. In Virginia a license is necessary to work on a well as a certified water well provider. Plumbers generally do not have this certification. Do not call a plumber for a well problem.

There are two types of pumps; a jet pump and a submersible pump. Most modern drilled wells are built with a submersible pumps. In older pump installations and dug wells, above ground jet pumps were often used, which can loose it prime. Both types of pump have a fitting called a foot valve. A foot valve is also used at the base of deep wells and is basically a check valve combined with an inlet strainer (older immersion pumps sometimes have what looks like a sock protecting the inlet). Both of these serve as a strainer to prevent picking up rocks or debris that could clog or jam the foot valve. They can get clogged and diminish flow.

Another possible problem is a leak or clog in the pitless adaptor. That is the fitting that allows the vertical well to connect to the horizontal pipe to the house below the frost line. Things like a leaky valve at the bottom of the well can result in a pump losing it prime after a power failure. The submersible pump is a long cylindrical unit that fits within the 6 inch diameter well casing. The bottom portion consists of the sealed pump motor connected to a series of impellers separated by a diffuser that drives the water up the pipe (which is black tubing in the picture) to the plumbing system through the pitless adaptor and a pipe that runs from the well beneath the ground to the basement.The piping or tubing within the well can fail or get clogged.

Finally your pump might be failing. According to the Water Systems Council a submersible pump should last 15 years or more, but silt, sand, iron bacteria and excessive mineral content can impact their life. A submersible pump operating high sediment water may fail in only a few years and a failing pump may appear as diminished pressure before complete failure.

If you need help with a well problem, the Wellcare® Hotline is staffed by the Water Systems Council (WSC), the only non-profit organization solely focused on private wells and small well-based drinking water systems. The Hotline operates Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and can be reached at 888-395-1033. Also, if you are in Virginia you can call or email the Virginia Master Well Owner’s Network for help.

Conversations about Wells Going Dry

Regularly, I receive questions about people’s wells through my blog. If you send your email address I will try to be helpful, but there are limits because often there is not enough information.I received the following question: 

“I just came across your blog and had a question for you.. We just bought our home and have been here almost two weeks, last night we had no water and this morning we do. Does that mean our well is running dry?  We've never had well water, so we're lost.”

I responded that it could, indeed, mean that their well is running dry; but it could also mean that you overused the well. Let's get some more details. How old is the well? What type of well is it and how deep is the well? Where are you? Do you have the well completion report? Did you test the well recharge rate when you bought the house? How much water did you use yesterday (showers, laundry, watering the lawn)? Please send me all the details you have and let's see if we can figure this out. 

“Honestly, I don't know the answers to those questions. I do know a lot of water was used yesterday, between everyone taking showers and my son out watering. I also did a lot of laundry. My son went and checked the holding tank, and I guess it had 300 gallons in there this morning. We live in San Tan Valley, AZ.”

That is very little information, it is important when you buy a house with a well, that you gather more information on the well and local ground water conditions. They live in southeast Arizona and the well has limited enough flow that the system has a holding tank. These type of holding tanks (sometimes called cisterns) are used with low flow wells that need to store all the water the well can produce in a 24 hour period. Also, a quick look at theDrought Monitor told me that region of Arizona is in drought conditions. Checking with the state department of water they say “Winter precipitation this year was well below average for an El Niño winter. The winter season had a strong start in November through January, then the storms stopped coming into Arizona. Most of the storms that crossed Utah brushed by northern Arizona, but left central and southern Arizona quite dry.”

In general watering is inadvisable in a desert when you have a well especially when in long periods of drought. Groundwater is found in aquifers below the surface of the Earth. This water supplies all wells- private, public and irrigation. The amount of groundwater that can be sustainably used is determined by the amount of rain and snow melt that recharges the groundwater each year and the storage capacity of the geology for variation between wet and dry years. Nature determines the amount of water that is available- geology, weather and climate. The cistern filling to 300 gallons overnight is an indication of how much water you will have available to use. During dry periods, there is little rainfall to refill the groundwater, but water use continues. Not too surprisingly, during a drought, and the dryer parts of the year the groundwater level will fall. Clearly, with 300 gallons recharging the cistern the well is not dry, but it is a low producing well. You might want to contact the Arizona Department of Water Resources and find out what records might exist for your well. Current Arizona regulations require the well driller complete a well driller’s report, including a well log. The information required includes:

• depth of the well
• depth to the water
• type and size of casing, and
•  kind of material used in well construction 
• the well yield test determines the quantity of water your well can produce

Based on generating 300 gallons overnight the current yield on your well is less than a gallon a minute. If this rate remains steady and not falling any further it is enough to run a household using conservation, but clearly inadequate to water your yard.

               Over time the amount of water a well produces can decrease. Sometimes that is because the water table is dropping. Other times it can be caused by the plugging of holes in the well casing, mineral encrustation of the well screen or the filling of openings in the geologic formation around the well from which water flows as discussed above. The pump performance could also be impaired by a damaged motor or impeller. Depending on what the problem is sometimes this can be fixed. The solution cannot be properly identified until the cause of the problem is identified. A well check-up should be performed regularly and whenever a problem is noticed. This check-up should include four components. First, is a flow test to determine system output, along with a check of the water level before and during pumping (if possible). Second is to check pump motor performance (check amp load, grounding, and line voltage), pressure tank and pressure switch contact, and general water appearance. (This will not necessarily identify a pump that is going to fail shortly). Next, is an inspection of well equipment to assure that it is sanitary and meets local code requirements. Third, a test of your water for coliform bacteria and nitrates, and anything else of local concern should be performed. These tests while not exhaustive, should allow you to differentiate between a pump problem, well/water supply problem, and other system problems.

               In the meantime you need to live within your water budget. You only have the water available to you that your well is generating. There are tremendous differences in water consumption of appliances and fixtures based on their age and design. For example low-flush toilets which use 1.6 gallons per flush versus 5 gallons per flush for the older toilets. According to the 2001 Handbook of Water Use and Conservation by A. Vickers and published by WaterPlow Press in Amherst, MA the average person flushes the toilet 5.1 times a day. Before the advent of low flush toilet, flushing was the largest use of water for each person. If you have new toilets your daily water use for flushing would be 8.2 gallons versus 25.5 gallons for an older toilet. Compressor assisted toilets (commonly used in highway rest stops) only use 0.5 gallons of water and if widely adopted could reduce flushing use of water to 2.6 gallons per day per person. Other toilets that have separate flush cycles for fluid can also save water, and of course there is the California strategy of not flushing after only urinating to minimize the daily number of flushes. Changing your toilets and flushing behavior turns out to be the single most effective water conservation strategy a household can implement. Thank goodness, there are now powerful flushing low flow toilets.

               The typical American uses the most water (indoors) for flushing, showering, washing hands and brushing teeth, and laundry. Buying water efficient appliances and fixtures and changing behavior can significantly reduce our water use. For bathing and brushing teeth low flow faucets and showerheads and behavior modification (not running the water while you brush your teeth, shorter showers or not running the water while you lather up can save about a third of the water typically used for personal hygiene, reducing the typical 28 gallons a day to 19 gallons a day. Laundry is the second largest use of water after toilets. Try not to do more than one load of laundry a day.  A top loading washing machine uses 43-51 gallons per load while a full size front load machine uses 27 gallons per load and some machines have low volume cycles for small loads that use less. Replacing a top load washing machine with a front load machine saves 6-9 gallons of water per person per day or 24 gallons per load of laundry. A standard dishwasher uses 7-14 gallons per load while a water efficient dishwasher uses 4.5 gallons per load.

The most water used in dessert environments is for outdoor watering. A hose typically runs at 3 gallons or so a minute. Eliminating the watering of your ornamental garden would significantly reduce water use especially in Arizona. You need to have desert landscaping or to only water plants very selectively. Be mindful of your water use and it possible to live with a well producing about a half a gallon a minute with a large household for years without any problems, 

Best,

Elizabeth Ward

He Always Has Brown Water after a Storm

I often get questions from readers and as part of the VAMWON network. Often the questions do not have enough detail for me to be helpful. Like when someone tells me their well stopped working what’s wrong. My first thought at those times is to secretly think “I don’t know, my crystal ball isn’t working.” Usually, I just begin asking questions. To be of any help I need information on your well, a description of the problem and its history and pictures would be helpful. Recently I received the following in response to my blog on storm impacted wells:

“I am not sure if you could share some thoughts as I have had a problem with my 38 foot deep 2 foot Diameter shallow well in rural Spotsylvania County that I have been fighting for the past 9 years. My issue is pretty synonymous with the symptoms which you stated.

The water pumped into the house from the well by way of the internal well pump will stay brown for about 2 weeks after a series of heavy rainstorms. Consequently, we always use bottled water during that time and wait for things to clear up.

I have regularly tested the well after things have cleared up over the years by using the WaterSafe test kit and have never noticed bacteria. (I have never tried it when it was brown though).

The water entering the house is pre-filtered by a pleated 10 inch 50 micron filter. When the heavy rains start, I have (with some success) put in a 5 micron carbon filter in it’s place. This seems to help when things aren’t so bad, but it doesn’t do very much when there are storms going on for days on end  like the ones we had.

I was thinking of going with an even lower micron filter as a temporary measure when the storms are bad. I know it probably won’t last more than a week, but if I knew the right micron, it might work. (I am very surprised that I am getting colored sediment even with a 5 micron filter though.”

I responded to the email: 

             
Wow, 38 feet is a very shallow well and likely to be impacted by surface infiltration, and drought. Typically rain water and snow melt percolate into the ground and the deeper the well the further away is the water origination and the older the water. The groundwater age is a function of the depth of the well, the geology of the area, the precipitation, recharge of the aquifer and pumping rates of the aquifer that control the rate of flow of water to a well. The age of the water in an aquifer provides insight into the likelihood of contamination from both anthropogenic and natural sources. Very young groundwater that has recently infiltrated into the aquifer is more vulnerable to contamination from human activities near the land surface than older, deeper groundwater that has had more time to be filtered by soils. Old groundwater, however, is not necessarily free of contaminants. The older groundwater can contain naturally occurring chemical elements and contamination from years past. The land surface through which groundwater is recharged must remain open and uncontaminated to maintain the quality and quantity of groundwater. 

It is always best to do a complete water analysis while the water is still brown to ensure that there is not another cause for the discoloration. Also, you do not indicate what you tested for, there are other causes of brown water, but it is a reasonable guess given your history that you are not experiencing episodic iron. However, you really should spend the money to do a complete analysis both before and after the water clears.

Filter cartridges for sediment removal are rated in microns. As you know, the micron rating for a water filter is a way of indicating the ability of the filter to remove contaminants by the size of the particles. A filter that is marked “5 microns” has some capability in capturing particles as small as 5 microns. However, there is no one accepted method to measure and describe the size of particles that a filter can capture or the total amount of particles that the filter can hold. Filter micron ratings for water are usually Nominal or Absolute. For sediment removal, Nominal rated cartridges are most common. Absolute ratings are needed for example, in removing Giardia, a type of parasite, when it becomes important that the filter cartridge absolutely must be rated at 1 microns. A Nominal Micron Rating (NMR) usually means the filter can capture a given percentage of particles of the stated size. For example, a filter might be said to have a nominal rating of 90% at 10 micron.

The breakthrough you are experiencing could possibly be resolved by having two or three filters in series, a 50 micron followed by a 25 micron followed by a 5 micron; however, I have a basic concern that there is the possibility that your well could be impacted not only by bacteria but by parasites and spores that have the potential to be fatal in vulnerable populations. Though I would encourage you to drill a well at least 100 feet below grade to ensure the health of your family, surface water can be treated. You need a series of filters meticulously maintained to reliability remove the discoloration, a series of two or three should do it. (This will impact your water pressure that you may need to boost it.) Make sure you match the flow to the capacity of the filer. Then after the water is clear you need to disinfect using a using a UV light.

Finally, you will need a point of use filtration system for any water that is likely to be drunk because of the potential for cysts, parasites etc. Giardia is a fairly common microscopic parasite that causes diarrhea. Once an animal or person is infected with Giardia, the parasite lives in the intestine and is passed in feces. Because the parasite is protected by an outer shell, it can survive outside the body and in the environment for long periods of time extending to months. Millions of Giardia parasites can be released in a bowel movement of an infected human or animal. Human or animal waste can enter water through sewage overflows from flooded septic systems, polluted storm water runoff, and agricultural runoff. Wells may be more vulnerable to such contamination after flooding, particularly if the wells are shallow, have been dug or bored, or have been submerged by floodwater for long periods of time.

The CDC usually recommend boiling water, but that may be impractical unless you are sure that the water is impacted. An alternative to boiling water is using a point-of-use filter. Not all home water filters remove Giardia. Filters that are designed to remove the parasite should have one of the following labels:

•  Reverse osmosis,
•  Absolute pore size of 1 micron or smaller,
•  Tested and certified by NSF Standard 53 for cyst removal, or
•  Tested and certified by NSF Standard 53 for cyst reduction.

I hope this helps.

Keeping the Water Flowing to Your Home from a Well

Private well owners are responsible for maintaining the water supply to their homes as well as monitoring their water quality. Water well pump systems operate on electricity, so in power failures there is no water and no (or limited) septic if your system operates on a pump. (Note also that well pumps operate on 240v and if they should blow a fuse there are two fuses to replace or two circuit breakers to flip. A pump might work poorly on 120 volt if only one fuse or circuit breaker is blown disguising a simple problem. So, always check your fuses or circuit breakers first whenever you have a water supply problem. ) As the winter storms and recent thunder storms and power outages have reminded us, sometimes power can be lost for days. A small portable liquid gas or diesel-powered electricity generators are available that can operate the pump or full-system generators that will run your well, refrigeration, heating, cooling, and other systems in your home, will keep your well operating in an emergency. I have an automatic switch generator connected to liquid propane in ground tank to operate my home in an emergency.

Besides power outages, there are other causes of failure of your water system. A component of the well or pump system might fail or the well itself might develop problems. The most common type of private water well pump is the submersible pump which pushes water to the surface as opposed to jet pumps that pull water. Submersibles are more efficient than jet pumps or the older water rams. The entire pump assembly is submerged below the water level in the well. The main advantages of this type of pump are that it keeps the pump cool and can prevent pump cavitations, which is basically sucking air and reducing the life of your pump. The presence of air or other gases in the actual pump chambers or around the water pump impellers leads to overheating of these parts and mechanical damage to the pump’s moving parts. Cavitations can also cause the pump to have to work longer to meet the water demand which in turn can cause its electric motor to overheat, reducing motor life. Falling water level in a well could cause pump failure so that both your well and the pump end up failing simultaneously. Without testing the well, you might replace the pump only to have the new pump fail over a short period of time.

The most common cause of falling water level is the slowing of the recharge of water to the well. . This can be caused by a falling of the water level due to drought or over pumping of the aquifer or the plugging of holes along the well’s casing and mineral crusts forming on the well screens if the well casing extends to the water table. My well was drilled in siltstone and the casing only extends for the first forty feet of the well. This method prevents clogging of a screen in a firm substratum that contains hard water (which is likely to deposit lime scale on the screen) and is cheaper to drill. However, an unscreened well might allow larger stone particles to be pulled up by the impellers and wrack the pump or damage the impellers. Dealing with natural systems like groundwater and local geology there is no perfect design. The life of a well and its pump is determined by geology, mineral content of the water, operation hours and a number of other factors that can result in a wide variability in well and pump system life from five to twenty-five years.

Calcium carbonate, iron bacteria, silt, clay, and “slime,” a combination of sediment and deposits on well casings and screens, are all common causes of a clogged well. A clogged well can be rehabilitated rather than just drilling a new well. (This may only be cost effective in deep wells or fully screened wells.) Two typical methods are (1) using mild acids to dissolve the incrusting materials so they can be pumped from the well and (2) cleaning the well with a brush that can be attached to a drilling rig and then used in the well. High pressure jetting, hydro fracturing, and well surging are procedures in which water is injected into the well at extreme pressures. Well service companies will often use a combination of these methods to rehabilitate an older well, the additional life gained from these procedures could be decades or months. Slime buildup can also cause persistent coliform bacteria presence. For iron bacteria and slime, a liquid bacteria acid is effective. For clogs with calcium carbonate scale, sulfamic acids are used with inhibitors and modifiers. If the bacteria problem is persistent some of the more aggressive chemicals are muriatic acid and hydroxyacetic acid.

Over time the amount of water a well produces can decrease. Sometimes that is because the water table is dropping. Other times it can be caused by the plugging of holes in the well casing, mineral encrustation of the well screen or the filling of openings in the geologic formation around the well from which water flows as discussed above. The pump performance could also be impaired by a damaged motor or impeller. The solution can not be properly identified until the cause of the problem is identified. A well check-up should be performed regularly and whenever a problem is noticed. This check up should include four components. First, is a flow test to determine system output, along with a check of the water level before and during pumping (if possible). Second is to check pump motor performance (check amp load, grounding, and line voltage), pressure tank and pressure switch contact, and general water appearance. (This will not necessarily identify a pump that is going to fail shortly). Next, is an inspection of well equipment to assure that it is sanitary and meets local code requirements. Third, a test of your water for coliform bacteria and nitrates, and anything else of local concern should be performed. These tests while not exhaustive, should allow you to differentiate between a pump problem, well/water supply problem, and other system problems.

I can not over emphasize the importance of a systematic approach to identifying a problem. Remember, well drillers and service companies while very knowledgeable are in the business of selling and installing equipment their knowledge and veracity will vary. You can get help in understanding a well check up report from the The Master Well Owners project volunteers in your area. This is a federally funded program operating in the mid Atlantic states. The Virginia Master Well Owner Network is a group of trained, dedicated Virginia Cooperative Extension agents and volunteers who have completed training about protecting and maintaining private water systems such as wells, springs and cisterns, and about water conservation, testing and treatment. This network is designed to provide practical information to private water system owners on the proper management of private water wells. One final thought, generally speaking the nearest source of water contamination to your drinking water well is your own (or neighbors) septic system. At a minimum you should inspect the septic tank each year for capacity and leaks, pump out the tank every three years (according to the newest recommendations from the US EPA) rather than the minimally required five years here in Virginia, watch for indications of impairment to your leach/drain field. When a septic tank is not pumped out often enough, sludge (solid material) builds up inside the septic tank, and then flows into the leach field, clogging it beyond repair. Excessive load from toilets and garbage disposal, putting grease, coffee grinds, kitty litter down the drain will shorten the life of and potentially overload the system. Even with proper use and maintenance the system will wear out. Eventually, the soil around the leach field becomes clogged with organic material, forcing sewage upward into the yard (bright green strips of lawn over the leach field) or back into the house (black liquid in the toilets or slow flushing or draining).