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VIDEO SEPTIC TANK ROOT CELLAR PLANS TOUR
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Jan 24, 2024
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View Video Transcript
0:00
This video is to introduce you to the idea of using a new concrete septic tank
0:06
to create a root cellar. It solves a lot of problems, it greatly simplifies the
0:12
construction process, and I just want to highlight a few details for you now to
0:17
get you to think about it. Right here you have the concrete septic tank itself
0:23
You're going to need to get a fairly large one. You'll notice too that the
0:29
tank doesn't have a divider in the middle. Septic tanks typically have a
0:34
dividing wall in the middle, and that will need to be removed for this to work
0:40
properly so you have enough room. There's going to be some cutting and drilling of
0:46
the concrete required, and that's one of the places. Another thing to notice is that
0:52
there's a door here on the side. Concrete septic tanks don't come with doors, so
0:56
this is one that will need to be added. Quite a bit like the same process of
1:01
adding a door to a basement to create an outside entrance to the basement. You'd
1:07
use a masonry saw to cut through the concrete. It's not all that thick, it's
1:13
not really a huge job. You'll also notice here that the hatches that are part of
1:19
the top of every septic tank have had their handles cut off and the
1:27
lid set back in place with some caulking, some polyurethane caulking, some
1:32
long-lasting caulking like this, before a roof type membrane goes on top. Now this
1:39
septic tank is going to be quite impervious to moisture, so it will shed
1:44
water and there'll be soil on top and grass that grows on top and everything
1:50
but it's best to take multiple layers of safety here as far as waterproofing the
1:55
top goes. So that's why I'm specifying the two layers of self-sticking roof
2:00
membrane here that you see going over top of the access hatches with handles
2:05
removed. The next thing to look at is the base, and you can see this crushed stone
2:12
base here. There are a couple of reasons for setting the tank down on crushed
2:17
stone. One is drainage, so that rainwater and meltwater can drain away from the
2:26
septic tank. It's also easily leveled. A crushed stone base can be
2:33
made quite level, and that's important because when you set the tank down, what
2:40
you see is what you get. So you want your root cellar to be plumb and level
2:45
and that needs to start with a properly done crushed stone base. Any company that
2:51
can sell, that will sell these concrete tanks, will have a delivery truck with a
2:57
boom on it, and they can drive up to wherever you want and set it down in
3:01
place. If you set it down and you find that things aren't quite as plumb and
3:07
level as you thought they were going to be, check it right away and then have the
3:12
delivery person raise the tank up a little bit so you can rake some crushed
3:17
stone from one side to the other and try it again and get it pretty level. You
3:21
don't have to go crazy with it, but you might as well make it as level as you
3:25
reasonably can. There are a few other details here that you'll have to work
3:30
into the tank, and I'll touch on those now. You should put a floor drain in, so
3:36
that would involve boring a four, five, six inch hole in the floor all the way
3:42
through. Whatever is necessary to fit a kind of a floor drain screen of some
3:49
kind. It's nice to have a drain in there in case anything spills, but more
3:54
importantly so you can wash the root cellar down between uses. When you're
3:58
emptying it out in the spring, you're using up the last of the food there, it's
4:02
a great idea to wash this thing out and scrub it a little bit, and that floor
4:07
drain is going to help you quite a bit. Another feature you need to work in is
4:12
openings for these vents. Every large walk-in root cellar like you see here
4:20
requires two vents. The reason is to promote air circulation throughout the
4:27
cellar. So you'll need one event that ends low near to the floor here, and
4:32
another event that ends up high, that opens up high, and that combination is
4:38
going to allow you to increase ventilation when you need to. And when I
4:44
say when you need to, that's a function of trying your best to maintain the
4:50
ideal conditions of temperature and humidity in the root cellar. So look here
4:57
and you'll see something called a blast gate. This is a kind of sliding valve
5:01
that's normally used for a dust collection systems in woodworking shops and things, but it makes a great control for allowing more or less ventilation to
5:13
occur. The ideal conditions for a root cellar are about 90 to 95 percent
5:19
relative humidity and a temperature just a little bit above freezing. Now you
5:25
definitely will not be able to achieve those perfect conditions all the time
5:29
throughout the year, but that's what you want to aim at. And operating this blast
5:36
gate will help you to control temperature and humidity, always aiming for that target. Now an empty septic tank fitted out with events in a floor drain
5:47
and a door does not a root cellar make. I mean it's a great start, but to function
5:53
for storing food, this thing needs to be buried. Kind of as much as possible
6:00
really. So you might have a bank of soil that you can dig into to create and
6:08
then lay down a crushed stone base and set down the septic tank and then replace some of the soil around the bank. That would be a great situation, but
6:18
those scenarios aren't all that common. To have a bank in a well-drained area
6:24
you know, ideally facing north if you're in the northern hemisphere or south if
6:29
you're in the southern hemisphere, so that you can get away from too much sun
6:34
landing on the door of the root cellar. Those situations are kind of rare, so you
6:39
can make a root cellar like this even on flat ground. The issue is just having
6:46
to bring in more soil. Soil covering is really the thing that
6:52
empowers a root cellar like this to preserve food. So you can see a bank of
6:58
soil here on the side. It's going to continue around the back. In this side
7:03
view you can see that you need at least 12 inches of soil cover on top of the
7:09
root cellar and that could be even more in areas they get quite cold because
7:16
as I mentioned before, you want 90 to 95 percent relative humidity and just a few
7:22
degrees above freezing. You definitely don't want temperatures to drop down below freezing because as soon as fruits and vegetables freeze, the cells expand
7:32
and rupture and now you've got some pretty instantly rotting produce when it
7:38
finally does defrost. So soil covering is key and really the more the better
7:43
That's kind of the bottom line. Now the thing is, if you've got a root cellar
7:49
that's mostly buried, then how do you gain access to the door? And that's what
7:55
you see going on here. There's a retaining wall. I've shown a sloped
8:03
timber retaining wall here. You can see a side view of it. You want the access to
8:09
the door to be as close as possible. As little around the door should be
8:17
uncovered by soil as possible. So you want to make this opening narrow and you
8:23
want to be able to bank soil up right along the retaining wall and then even
8:28
over top of the root cellar here. So take a look at the drawing down here and
8:33
you'll notice several things going on. They're actually crucial things. It's very important that you don't miss this. First of all, notice that the retaining
8:41
wall is sloped slightly in towards the soil. It's not directly straight up and
8:47
down. That gives it a better ability to resist soil pressure but sloping alone
8:54
is definitely not enough because the pressure of soil against a wall like
9:00
this is relentless and you need to do at least one of two things, ideally both
9:06
things. The first thing is to make extensions of the wood you're using
9:13
extend into the bank of soil and then be anchored there with with some cross
9:19
pieces. So if you look at the side view here you can see the end view of timbers
9:24
every so often. Well those are leading to what you see down here which extends
9:29
into the bank and then there's a cross piece right here which helps to anchor
9:34
the wall against the soil pressure. Even more important than this though is the
9:41
use of what's called geogrid to stabilize the soil. Geogrid is kind of
9:47
like a very coarse woven fabric that's made to have a high tensile strength in
9:56
one direction. So when you lay down pieces of geogrid on the soil as it's
10:03
being backfilled, maybe every foot or 16 inches up as you go, what it does is it
10:08
introduces great tensile strength to the soil. That's not something soil normally
10:13
has. Soil can break apart quite easily and in this case start to apply pressure
10:20
to this wall and cause it to cave in but when you have these layers of geogrid
10:25
they reinforce the soil so it doesn't want to ooze outwards anymore and it
10:32
doesn't want to put pressure on retaining walls like this. In fact geogrid
10:36
is so useful for something like this that I have seen 40 foot high near
10:43
vertical walls of nothing but soil reinforced with geogrid. So the geogrid
10:49
was in the layers and the geogrid came down the front and it held together
10:54
It didn't collapse even when it got wet. So pretty amazing stuff and not just for
11:00
these sorts of walls either but for any kind of retaining wall situation in your garden, geogrid is the thing to use. So that's going to help you gain reliable
11:11
access to this door and you're not going to have to worry about the wall
11:15
collapsing in. Just one other thing while we're looking at the front view here
11:20
Drainage tiles are important if you have any sort of moderate to heavy soil at
11:28
all because if the soil in your area is light then the rainwater is just going
11:34
to run away. It's going to go through the crushed stone and just keep on going through the sand or the gravel or whatever you're building on. But if the
11:41
area underneath your root cellar is heavy clay then you're going to have to
11:46
provide some place for the water to go. Crushed stone alone is not enough
11:52
Crushed stone, the spaces between the crushed stone will eventually get saturated with water if that water can't escape because it's surrounded by clay. So in
12:00
situations like that you'll want a drainage tile like you see here. It's got
12:04
to go to some place that's lower than the root cellar and open so that whatever
12:10
water accumulates there can run away freely and keep the site dry
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