Rid-X really works on septic systems? Or is at marketing hype?

Question

I have a seller who had a septic system test yesterday.  The inspector said that the flow to the leaching field was not fast enough to pass, but it wasn't slow enough to fail either.  It was on the bubble.

The seller was told by a family member that using Rid-X (https://www.rid-x.com/) helped them with a similar problem.

I've alway suspected that this was more hype than science, but it's not my expertise.

What say you, real estate experts?  Any real life experience with this stuff?

Bill F. · Answer

@Charlie MacPherson glad to hear it worked out for your seller. I'm not an expert on Rid-X/Roebic but I also have seen them work.

From my understanding they are nothing more than bacteria cultures specifically designed to target the issues in a particular part of your system. If you have lots of sludge in the tank that blocks the outflow, that probably means the tank doesn't have a lot of cultures which eat at the sludge layer, so it introduces them and they do their job, which eventually unblocks the outfow.  Same goes for the scum layer.

I think the emergency/specific ones are a bit better value then the maintenance ones, but I have no evidence to back that up. Every other month or so on my systems I flush half a jar of Fleischmann's yeast down the toilet to, for lack of a better term, supercharge the bacteria that are already in the system. It also helps the system recover if I had lots of people over for a party or we used bleach in the laundry.

A regular septic treatment is like $15 bucks and a jar of yeast is less than $3.

Charlie MacPherson · Answer

I thought I'd follow up my own post for the benefit of others.  It turns out that Rid-X actually worked.

My sellers used it and gave it about 3 weeks to work.  Then they had the septic retested and passed.

I have to admit that I was pretty skeptical, but was pleasantly surprised!