Do yourselves a favor: septic systems

[Daddymem]

Friday was quite the day.  My boss and I flew over to Nantucket Island to do a Title V (septic) system inspection on a house that will be put on the market for $8 million.  Well, we had some lousy "Ass-Built" plans that some clown put together.  No swing ties, no depths, no nothing but a sketch showing roughly that there were components buried in the back yard.
We probed, we dug holes, we snaked, we tried everything to find the tank.  We punctured the propane line running from a tank to the pool heater.  We used metal detectors to find buried pieces of metal, but no tank.  Finally, when the place looked like a scene from Caddyshack, we called the Board of Health to see how far we had to take this.
"Uncover everything" was the word....that meant mini excavator time.  With that we broke the septic tank cover, destroyed the D-box, broke the propane line again, broke irrigation lines several times, and broke numerous sprinkler heads in the process.
How many holes to find the leaching pit?


All completely avoidable with a decent As-Built sketch.  
We completed the inspection, then did what should have been done before it was buried the first time...made an As-Built Sketch.  It takes two people and a few minutes to accurately record the location of items before you go an bury them.  Here's how:
Sketch up the permanent features of your property near the object to be buried.  House, deck, porches, pools, patios, etc.
Sketch in a rough location of the objects to be buried.
Now choose two (preferably 3) corners of the permanent objects and label them on your sketch as A,B,C, etc.
Now choose parts of your objects to be buried and label them X,Y,Z (center of covers, corners of tanks, etc.)
Now create a table on the sketch with the following columns: Structure, A,B,C, etc, and Depth.
Make a row for each object you will bury.
Measure the distance from each corner to the object and fill in the table. (this is where the second set of hands come in handy)
Finally estimate or measure the depth that the object will be buried and fill that in the table.
Now do yourself a favor: PUT THIS SOMEWHERE WHERE IT CAN BE FOUND AND USED IN THE FUTURE!
Now someone should be able to find the object in the future.  
Here is the crude but useable As-Built we created for that job as an example:

[jraabe]

Daddymem:

Valuable advice!

Something like this should also be done before final layout and placement of the house. It can include the garage, driveways, landmark plantings and any current or planned out buildings.

Such a "homestead vision" (or site plan), if it is kept updated with things as they are built or buried, becomes more and more valuable as the projects accumulate.

[jonseyhay]

This is a requirement with your development application in Australia. A site plan with the layout of all underground utilities must be provided and is kept by the local council. Three copies of the plans are presented for stamping, as well as the one kept by the council there is one for your lending institution and one for the owner.
jonesy