Leaking cistern - anyone have experience?
Hoping someone here can help: my wife and I have two old concrete cisterns just outside our house. There seems to be an old pipe from the bottom of one of them leading into the basement of the house and it's started leaking. I've pumped out the one cistern but the other one has been sealed shut. I'm not very familiar with cistern design so I don't really know how to permanently fix this. Anyone have ideas? Or anyone have an idea of who I should call? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! The picture is the larger of the two cisterns that I can actually open.
Joshua 
iJay 
The_Bishop Call Peach brothers septic service they will know what to do 850 9222 you can say the Erohs recommended them cisterns were used to collect rain water for none potable water usage
Caged Animal I moved here 50 yrs ago. 2 cistrins.... One had to keep filled to have hot water...had a problem with that early 70's ..3 "Newbies" came out and said Lady I have no idea how you have hot water or what this is... On to getting thankfully an ole timer to the area explained how it worked and hooked it up different , probably from 75 yrs before... On to the 2nd one, that has been the septic for now well over 100 yrs, and never a problem. Get it pumped out every year or so..Know the next owner will pay $20,000 plus for a new system... Call Ron Peterson..he has lived here all his life and knows how to tackle it.
Jo Anne 
CraftBeerBob A cistern isn't a septic. A cistern was used to collect rainwater for use in the house. I guess the down spouts from the roof were routed to funnel water into the tank. We had 2 old cisterns in our house and when we remodeled we just cut the pipe away and filled them in with stone. You can't see how the water is getting in? I don't know much about them but I assume the pipe in the bottom is how the water was fed out of the tank. Do you see pipes at the top where the water could be coming in from?
M & K Understood that cistern is not a septic but Peach Brothers can handle either. Granville Peach gotta be close to 85 now still going on site to investigate issues. God bless him.
Old style cisterns are boxes with an inlet on the high side and an outlet on the low side for a gravity flow. Might be an overflow at the top as well. Modern versions would replace the lower outflow outlet and put a pump and floating outlet leading to of top of tank outlet. These will certainly have an overflow.
Septic tanks have inlets at the top of one side and an outlet on the top of another side. Fluids float out, sediments fall and thus you must pump once in awhile unless you decompose the sediment into fluids.
And to complete the topic with tmi: cesspools are like septic except using stacked block or rock where there are open joints up and down the tank hopefully letting the fluid out everywhere. Last time I was on a cesspool, I went 20 years before needing a pump (and then needed to replace a few years later as the joints jammed up).
So........if you have a cistern and it's close to the house, that's your first possible problem. If it is filling, you basically have a pond next to your house. Leaks could be coming from the pipe or anywhere in the unit that has cracked, including the pipe you can't see, and is letting water flow into your foundation.
I am guessing there is no active source of incoming water, but if there is, you probably need to stop or divert that whether you have a cistern or not.
If it's just seeping in, you can try to block the water coming in and that can help. But if the water is coming through cracks in the cement walls, good luck stopping it. Same for water coming out. Hard to stop a porous unit from leaking even if you fix the current cracks, more will form. You can fill the unit with something and that MIGHT help. Or you can remove the unit, backfill and problem should be solved.
If it's just the pipe leaking, I would first seal the pipe. Then I would open the top enough to fill it with something, the more solid to replace water volume the better. The smaller the pond , the smaller the problem. Lastly I might look at the ground around the cistern and, if possible, get it to slope away diverting any ground water from the area. My foundations are pretty porous and I deal with a lot of water problems with this method. I have gone from lakes in the basement to dry just by sloping the ground away from the foundations.
Good luck. Water sucks.
strangerdanger Still get back to use? If you do not want to use it for irrigation purposes then fill them. We do not live in an area that is dry nor do we have unreliable city water systems.
Pipe running to the basement is of interest. Is there evidence of a separate line that was pressurized for an external faucet and possibly separate line to the toilets (toilets can use this water unless you have a cat that drinks from them :) )...
Thank you to everyone who commented here. I'm going to be calling someone today regarding the issue. To help answer some other questions that were brought up:
1) It's possible one of the cisterns had been used as a septic for the washing machine in the basement prior to when we moved in.
2) Water seepage into the cistern seems likely, BUT, why is it happening now when it hasn't rained in a week?
3) Probably going to cap the pipe in the cistern that leads to the house (presumably). Will also need to somehow open up the other cistern to see what's in there including any plumbing.
4) Would love to somehow get the large cistern "working" again to allow it to collect rainwater from our gutters and then use that water for the lawn, gardens, etc.
5) iJay: You asked about a separate line but I don't see evidence of that. There's an overflow pipe from the one cistern, and the other cistern has a large hole in the top where a pipe certainly could have been but most likely some sort of hand pump.
6) StrangerDanger: it's possible water is leaking directly into the pipe. I pumped out the cistern which had about 6 inches of water in the bottom and was just barely at the level of the pipe. Water in my basement dried up. This morning I woke up and there was some water leaking back into the basement. It was dark and I leave early for work so I didn't have the opportunity to check the cistern to see if the water level was up again. But it doesn't seem likely as I checked yesterday and it wasn't. But who knows. We have a stream on the opposite side of the house, so the water table is high but for the most part we don't have a lot of issues with flooding in the basement other than during very bad rains.
Anyway, thanks everyone again for the help. I'll try to update with more pics and info as I resolve this so that others can benefit from my trials!
Since the outlet is at the bottom, I gather, sounds like 6 in. or less will start the leak. Can't you just cap the pipe in the basement? Then cap the intake pipe and see if you still collect water.
FYI --- sounds easy but I have been chasing a leak running along my oil tank intake pipe for basement oil tank for a few years. I have sealed around the pipe on either side of the foundation a number of times and yet when it rains, and the gutters are clogged....back it comes. Thinking of putting a cement apron over the problem.......
To use the other for irrigation basin, just goggle cistern design. Problem is that probably it is currently a gravity system and you will probably want an electric self-priming pump to provide some amount of pressure. Be sure to be able to measure how full or empty the tank is and arrange for overflow. Sounds like expensive water unless you DIU.
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