Pia

Skip the additives. Every year someone at the hardware shop tells me a monthly enzyme packet means never pumping, and every septic professional I've asked has laughed. A healthy tank already has what it needs, the solids still accumulate and still have to leave in a truck.

One caution on the aluminium-zinc rod: some people notice a faint taste change. Doesn't bother most, bothered me slightly for a fortnight and then I stopped noticing. Powered anode avoids it if you're sensitive to that sort of thing.

Worth running your specific numbers past a fee-only planner once, even if you never see them again. I did it mostly to be told I was fine and instead found out I'd mis-sequenced which accounts to draw from, which was worth more than the fee.

When you do replace it, set the air charge with the tank empty and the pump off, and check it again once a year. It's a two minute job with a bike pump and a tyre gauge, and it more or less doubles the life of the tank.

Resuming partial contributions is not a defeat. I coast with about 300 a month still going in, which is small enough that it doesn't change my lifestyle and large enough that it quietly fixes a lot of bad-decade scenarios. Middle options exist.

Mine backwashes itself on a timer and I do nothing but check it twice a year. Media replacement is a several-year interval, not annual.

At 1.8 ppm you're in the awkward middle where a lot of people try to get away with a cartridge filter and end up changing it every three weeks. Ask me how I know. Whatever you install, price the running cost per year, not the purchase price.

Shrinking the required spend rather than growing the asset is a much better way to think about it than the rate comparison. Thank you.

A softener alone will remove maybe 1-2 ppm of ferrous iron on paper, and people do run them that way. What the brochures don't emphasise is that it fouls the resin over time and you end up cleaning it with iron remover regularly and replacing the bed years earlier than you would have. At 2.1 you're right at the edge where it half works, which is the worst place to be.

Same, and I found it dropped a lot when I picked up a small amount of paid work I actually enjoyed. Not for the money, for the fact that the money exists.