If a box on the side of your house is buzzing and a red light is on, that is your septic alarm. It usually goes off at the worst possible time, at night or in the middle of doing laundry, and it is easy to panic. Take a breath. In most cases you have some time, and a few simple steps will tell you how worried to be.
What the alarm is actually telling you
Most homes with a septic pump have an alarm that watches the water level in the pump chamber. When the water climbs higher than it should, the alarm trips. That almost always means one thing: water is coming into the tank faster than the pump is sending it out. The pump might have failed, a float might be stuck, the power to the pump might be off, or the system might just be overwhelmed by heavy water use.
Do this in the next few minutes
- Silence the alarm. There is a button or a small switch on the panel. Silencing the buzzer does not fix anything, but it lets you think.
- Stop using water. No laundry, no dishwasher, short showers, go easy on the toilets. Every gallon you send down right now makes the level worse. This is the single most important thing you can do.
- Check the breaker. Find the breaker or the outlet for the septic pump and make sure it has not tripped. If it tripped, you can reset it once. If it trips again right away, leave it off and call. Something is wrong with the pump.
What not to do
Do not open the septic tank or pump chamber yourself. The gases inside are dangerous and people are seriously hurt every year doing exactly that. Do not keep resetting a breaker that keeps tripping. And do not ignore the alarm and keep living as normal, because a full pump chamber will eventually back up into the house or surface in the yard.
How much time do you have
If you stop using water, most systems hold for a while, often overnight. That is usually enough time to get someone out the next morning instead of paying for a middle-of-the-night emergency. If water is already backing up into a drain or you smell sewage inside, that is not a wait-until-morning situation.
Septic service across Sussex County and northern New Jersey
JWSR installs and works on septic systems throughout Sussex County and the surrounding towns, so we know these panels and pumps well. If your alarm is going off and you are not sure what you are looking at, call us at (862) 268-2510. We will help you figure out whether it can wait until morning and what it is going to take to fix.