Here's my story: We have a 1000 gallon main septic tank and a 500 gallon secondary tank and then probably a 100 ft drain field. Our system is about 18 years old. We have our tank pumped every 3 years per county regulations.

O.K., so about 5 weeks ago we noticed that our floor drain in our basement laundry room was draining really slow and coming up out of the drain when I drained laundry. This has happened a handful of times over the past 10 years. If we had tracked it better, I now wonder if it happened after really heavy rains.

I had our tanks pumped at that time and before the man left we had my son flush the toilet and we could hear hte water enter the tank - so all systems are go from in the house.

Fast forward and last Friday I noticed the same problem with the laundry drain - went outside and took the cap off the main tank and it appeared to be very full. The secondary tank appeared to be about even; which I was told was good since water acts as a level.

I had the tanks pumped again - am now wondering if the fact that we had over 1" of rain on Thursday night had anything to do with the tanks being so full so fast. Is it possible that my drain field is plugged, or that since my yard has a lot of clay - could the saturated ground be sending water back into my tanks? Also wondering if maybe it's the baffles?

Any ideas or advice would be great. We are a family of 4 - two adults, 2 children - I do, on average, 1 load of laundry per day and run the dishwasher probably once a day and we all shower every day - my children are 10 and 12 - not sure if we are an average water usage family or not.