I wonder how many just hire pumpers who dump at their local city run landfill who they pay by the before & after weight calculation. Not that I am advocating that as the best way of doing it. The pumper would always charge enough to cover what his potential bill would be of course.
I remember getting a bid on our trash collection from WasteManagement & the sales person was real firm that the bid was based on no mud going into the 4 yard dumpster. He even went so far as saying they do not allow it along with discarded vehicle tires etc. Sometimes we allow our dumpsters to be unlocked & a tire is illegally put in by a passerby or customer. Shazamm ... what is that approximate extra $7.50 charge tacked onto that specific month's bill ... with the tire noted as the reason.
Mainly oil. If it tests good, the landfill can take it as mud, if it exceeds a certain amount the landfill charges more for some sort of processing.
$1,000 seems excessive just testing for oil presence.
In Washington State when you have your sludge tested there looking primarily looking for petroleum hydrocarbons, heavy metals, cadmium, mercury, lead and chromium. Then they do the 24 hour fish test with some trout fingerlings. Depending on the test results determines where they can dump the waste, a landfill is not an option. If you don’t have a test certificate a pumper isn’t supposed to pump you out. The cost of the test varies, normally it’s about $1000- $1500 everytime you have it pumped. A few guys I know are pumping out there pits and dumping the waste on land they own, bad idea as it could come back to bite you down the road should the land ever be tested and found to be contaminated.
Rudy’s right. You want to be very careful who you hire to pump out your pits and oil water separator tank. A friend mine used a company for a number of years. They went out of business when the company that was taking their waste went out of business. Come to find out the company that was receiving the waste wasn’t doing anything with it, all they did with all the waste that were receiving was storing it, mixing it with other waste etc. When all of their property, holding tanks and holding ponds were full of waste they filed bankruptcy and walked away. Enter the EPA, they undertook an aggressive cleanup, cleaned up the property. After the property was cleaned up the EPA filed a 35 million dollar law suit against everyone who sent waste to that waste facility. The more waste you sent to the facility the more your portion of the lawsuit was. His portion was around $36,000. After it was all said and done his lawyer ended up negotiating it down to around $14,000 to the EPA, with his lawyer fee’s he ended up paying a little less than $17,000. He thought that once his pit waste left the car wash that was the end of it, until a US Marshall delivered a 3” binder with the details of the lawsuit, he spent a lot of sleepless nights until it was settled.
I use the 8 foot. I think my pits are the same as yours. You sort of stab it down into the mud and then close the claw... closer you are to the bottom of the pit the more you'll need to squat to pull it back out of there.
i suggest you ask the company that will put in the reclaim system before your renovation.
our aeration pump runs 24/7.
