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I need some suggestions on who to contact about a frozen septic field. I have already contacted unplug and they can't come until likely Thursday at the soonest. Thanks

Is it your field or your septic tank, a few years back there was a cold snap for a while and people who had septic tanks that were shallow had problems with the tanks freezing up.  
This is not a wonderful suggestion, but are you able to get at your sewer pump without too much problem. We had our ejector freeze up one year and resorted to just hooking a long hose on the pump and pumping out that way, not the nicest thing to do but it solved the problem short term.  
 
Edited by don brown, 2018-01-01 15:26:56

We have had to pump it out on the ground outside already. Yes it was not ideal but ya gotta do what ya gotta do, Rather that than backing up into the basement.

If you are going to try and get the field thawed out try and track down some flax straw bales, I imagine they are hard to come by this late in the season, but they work good because they usually don't rot down like ordinary straw. A large round straw bale spead out over the field likely still work but it's more of a pain to clean up in the spring.  
Do see the odd ad for people looking for small straw bales, and if there are some out there still these are easier to clean up, but still rot down bad when the snow melts.

Its usually never an issue but we were just away for the week and without water being used it froze. We never usually have to cover with straw as we are always using water as I work from home. This will be likely the only time this happens. I just hope its an easy quick inexpensive fix. This could not come at a worse time. It's so frustrating because we never ever take time to ourselves and go anywhere. This year we did and then came back to this.

That really sucks. Being on the farm all my life I try and think of solutions for problems, but sometimes my solutions are not practical for others because they may not have the resources. It might sound silly calling round bale feeders, insulated tarps, a 100 lb bottle of propane and a tiger touch resources, but to me they are. When a person doesn't have things they would have to look at renting things to cover the field and thaw it out, also there is an investment in time, and it does make decisions difficult.

This happened to us once one winter. We ended up getting the septic tank cleaned out once a month until the field thawed out. However this was years ago and wasn't too expensive. We moved that year so didn't have to deal with this problem again. We hadn't had much snow that year and wondered if that was the problem with it freezing.

We don't know exactly how much the field is frozen. It could be just a matter of unplug coming and steaming out the lines to get things moving. We don't want to go through all the effort to thawing such a large part of the lawn only to have it be a quick fix. I guess we will have to wait until they get to us.

Since you are going to wait, do you have anything to cover maybe where the line enters the field, if you know where that point is, we are still going to have a few days of cold weather, so the frost will continue to get deeper.

Would love to hear how to fix this problem. I have a snow fence up to keep snow on the field. There just is no snow cover this year. Thawing a pipe seems like a temporary fix as the ground around it will just refreeze it.

We bought some insulated tarps at princess auto, would be interesting to find out how they would work at keeping frost out.

Wouldn’t burning bales thaw the ground? Then cover will flax bales for insulation?

I am hoping it is just the beginning of the lines that are frozen by the septic tank itself and not the whole field. Definitely not going to be burning any bales on my lawn right by my house to try and thaw ground out!  
 
We didn't have the greatest coverage on our septic lid which is why we are hoping it is just the beginning of the pipes that are frozen. we have since covered the lid with bales to keep the heat in.  
 
With any luck Unplug can come sooner than later this week! I am so stressed out over this as I have a home based business and this definitely affects things.

I have the same problem come up yesterday. I think the wastewater line has frozen up where it enters the septic tank. Does anyone know if portable steamers can be rented (and from where)? Or did Unplug fix the issue? And if so what was the cost?

Old time grave diggers used to have a five hundred gallon metal tank cut in half. Put a tiger torch in the end.  
 
I helped a plumber thaw ground one year. He borrowed the system from local grave yard. Would work similar to Don’s bale feeder and tarps.  
 
My dad burned old tires along water line. That worked but could be a fire hazard and made a mess in the yard but it worked

Frost will move up or down in the soil given the temperature above the ground, if you get a temperature that is to high when thawing a pipe or field out you will drive the frost down, whereas a temperature just above freezing will let the frost come up and prevent refreezing.  
Interesting link for soil temperatures here in our area, take notice of how there is real change with any moderation in temps.  
 
https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/weather/soil-temperature.html  
 
It is updated daily.

weekend123 said "I need some suggestions on who to contact about a frozen septic field. I have already contacted unplug and they can't come until likely Thursday at the soonest. Thanks "

if you could get some methyl hydrate from some oilfield company and pump that into the field -it should thaw it out .they usually have gallons of it -cheap to

Please don't pump your tank out on the ground. You could get a fine in the $1200-1300 range for that. If you need to empty the tank to get by, then hire a septic hauler to pump it.

- open the tank lid,  
- run a garden hose from inside with hot water with a "hard nozzle" on the end.  
-you will see on the liquid side where the pipe exits from the house and into the tank.  
- take the garden hose and put it in the pipe as far as you can towards the house.  
- push in , until it stops. if it stops way to early you know you have ice in there.  
- turn hot water on and let it run into the pipe ( your liquid side will fill up fast which is fine, keep running it)  
- keep feeding the pipe farther and farther into the pipe towards the house until blockage is gone  
- cover around the house where the pipe exits from the house with flax bails and cover tank lid.  
- fix any slow leaking taps as that will cause it to freeze up again  
 
It's a simple fix and never fails  
More questions feel free to ask, tried putting it in point form to make it easier

Don;t see the problem here with pumping the affluent out on the ground as it would be the same as haveing an ejector!! no fine for that

A pump out system. The injector may be plugged.

We had unplug come out. They ran their steamer line in 50 feet until they hit the junction box in the septic field. They obviously could not go any further. They did not hit any ice along the way. So for us it is the field. Nothing we can do except get the tank pumped out likely every 2 weeks until spring thaw.  
 
I am not about to light anything on fire in my back yard lol. Its next to impossible to get methyl hydrate into our septic field so that won't work.  
 
I do have access to a tarp system and heater but we have decided to wait until early spring so we don't have to dish out a pile of money running the heater to thaw the ground. We will wait until things have warmed up a bit in a couple months and then do a quick thaw. We will be investing in buying some septic field blankets for next winter.