How much does a drain field cost

I recently had a drain field failure..... lame :( so of course the question that goes through your mind is how much is that going to cost to replace. At least in my area (WA) the range seems to be somewhere between $5,000 to $10,000. It all depends on a lot of things of course.

We learned a lot about drain fields (and septic) in the process. We learned that our original system was made of concrete tiles that were covered in newspaper and then covered in dirt. I guess they were really only made to last 25ish years so we were 'lucky' that ours lasted for about 50. We also learned that you can look up the plans for your 'as built' drainfield\septic. In Snohomish county this is at this website http://ww2.snohd.org/shdcontactcore/CMSDisclaimer.aspx

So we started looking around for someone to replace our drain field.

After getting a number of referrals we decided to get a quote from above grade septic http://www.abovegrade.co/

Dustan seemed very knowledgeable, and took the time to answer all of our questions. So we turned him loose on our yard.

This was our yard before its operation.

The interesting thing about the solution that Dustan suggested was using graveless chambers. I of course had to google this to the learn about them. This is a very good description of the system here http://www.nesc.wvu.edu/pdf/WW/publications/pipline/PL_SU01.pdf

 Basically they look like upside halfpipes that allow the water to infiltrate through the soil.

 Dustan did a great job, and installed the various chambers. Then after much dirt moving our yard looked like this....

And then finally he finished it all up.