# Filling in holes on or near a septic leach field



## fre1102 (Jul 22, 2020)

Hi all,

I bought a new house last year. I have not historically been a lawn nut, but this yard has me wanting to improve it. One of the issues I have is that the backyard is incredibly uneven and bumpy, with ruts and holes/depressions everywhere. Almost all of the backyard is a septic system leach field.

I've Googled and read and it looks like "less is more" when adding material over a leach field. For most of the uneven spots we'd be talking about a few inches of material, max. But the worst/biggest hole is about a foot deep and maybe two feet in diameter. This hole seems to be on the edge of the drain field--when I cut the grass and stand on a second storey deck you can pretty clearly see where the leach field is laid out and it looks like this depression is a 'fall off' of the edge where they didn't fill in a spot when they originally built the leach field. I can't be sure, though, so my next thought is: it's an actual hole. So even if it was over the field, it's just bringing it up to level with the rest of the field. ...right?

I couldn't think of whom else to ask--is it okay to fill in that hole and smooth out the rest of the area? Driving the mower over it is...jarring, at best.

Next I get to deal with growing some real grass on it, but I think that's a conversation for another day...

Thanks in advance.


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## BadDogPSD (Jul 9, 2020)

Did you have a septic tank inspection when you bought the house? Any chance the 1'x2' depression could be where one of the access lids is located?
I don't see an issue with leveling the lawn. The only thing I'm aware of is you may not want to apply too much water where the leech field lines are located.


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## Thejarrod (Aug 5, 2018)

I had a similar issue at my house. Edge of the mound had a hole. It almost looked like the ran out of topsoil when leveling it (my mound is flatter than average with the rest of the lawn ). It was maybe 3ft across and 8 inches deep. I leveled it out and the system works fine...as far as I can tell.


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