One of the great things about Westchester County, NY is the variety of homes you will find – from luxury high-rise apartments to “horse country” estates. Something you may encounter, as you move away from the urban areas in your home search, is a different type of system to handle household waste than the one to which you have been accustomed. Yes, I am referring to septic systems. This is rarely top of mind when house hunting but can be an important factor in deciding whether to purchase a property.
So, what is a septic system and how does it differ from a sewer system? The primary difference is that a sewer system relies on a public, centralized network to transport wastewater to a municipal treatment plant, while a septic system processes and treats all wastewater independently on your own property. In a public sewer network, waste travels through a pipeline in the municipality’s underground grid, leaving the community-wide treatment, regulation, and chemical processing to local public works. Conversely, a septic system utilizes a buried, watertight tank where solids separate from liquids, next to a specialized drain field where the remaining effluent is naturally filtered and absorbed directly back into the local soil. The size of the field is subject to local health department regulations and typically relates to the number of bedrooms in the building(s) serviced by the system.
There is an important operational distinction. If you have a home connected to the municipal sewer system, there is not much you have to do other than pay whatever the municipality charges its residents for the service. There are no similar costs for a septic system however, a private septic system places 100% of the maintenance responsibility on the homeowner. This includes obtaining professional tank pump-outs and monitoring what you flush to avoid system problems.
This should not deter you from purchasing a home. You should, however, plan on having a separate septic inspection in addition to the residential inspection. The inspection can confirm that the tank is still intact and if waste is still flowing to the system. Feel free to ask the seller to provide maintenance records with the name of the maintenance company. If the inspection reveals a problem, you can negotiate with the seller the best way to handle it. If the house has been expanded since the original construction, you should check that it still complies with the original health department approval. I have encountered situations in which the original field was expanded, or a second field was added due to an addition to the house or the construction of another residential building on the property.
Oh, and you may also encounter “cesspools”. A cesspool or cesspit is an older, less efficient predecessor to the modern septic system. It is a perforated pit without a separate treatment tank. In some areas people may still use the term interchangeably with septic in casual conversation. If “cesspool” is in the listing, your agent should verify if that is the case or if it is actually a septic system.
Again, do not be deterred by this. Some of our nicest properties in our loveliest communities have a septic system.
