Perc Test

Our branch of the MacMillans left the family farm nearly 80 years ago and even then I think they may have had indoor plumbing, so this whole septic field thing was a bit of a mystery.  Still, the words “perc test” came up early and often once we closed on the land.

Sitting in my office in New York City, it was all a little remote. Research was required. From the always authoritative Wikipedia, I found that that the process, officially known as a “percolation test” is used for determining the absorption rate of soil for a leach field prior to building a septic system.

It sounds high falutin’ but in practice a perc test consists of drilling some holes in the ground, filling them with water, and waiting to see how long it takes the water to drain. (Faster is better.)  In standard practice, five or more holes are drilled three to six feet in depth, with the flow rate calculated in minutes per inch. The exercise is not just academic: the size of the septic field and the flow determine how many bedrooms can be incorporated into your house.

We had five acres of field and another five of woods to work with and were planning to have four bedrooms, so this seemed like a slam dunk, so to speak.  But they don’t call it Orange County for nothing, and as anyone who’s dug into, or worked with, orange clay can tell you, porousness is not one of its better qualities.   So the inspector who came out to locate the field – a thoughtful man from the Orange County Health Department with a PhD in cell biology – had to range a bit to find a suitable spot.

As it turned out, that was about as far away as possible from where we planned to put the house, down one hill and up another.  A pump would be required to move things along, we were told, suggesting that money, too, would be disappearing into this part of the field.