Septic System Water

The aerobic treatment unit components - pretreatment tank, aeration chamber, air pump and settling chamber - work together to treat the water to a high quality.

In the system, wastewater first enters the pretreatment tank or trash trap, which removes plastic objects and other solids that float or settle. Then it enters an aeration chamber, where oxygen supplied by an air pump allows aerobic organisms to live.

Treatment in the aeration cham­ber is a biological process in which microbes eat the waste and their bodies transform it into nonpolluting material.

The microbes change dissolved and solid pollutants into cell mass, nondegradable material and gases such as carbon dioxide, hydro­gen and methane.