Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Smallhold Farming and Rural Living => Property, Buildings, Equipment and Alternative Energy => Topic started by: grinling on April 23, 2011, 19:40
-
After considering wood burners I know need advice on septic tanks. Read other topics on this, but how can you tell it needs emptying. The surveyor for this property we are buying sent pictures of the tank/s and they look very full. Property has not be lived in since December. Rainwater goes into it. Should it look full?
Thank you
-
Unusual for rainwater to go into a septic tank, are you sure?
We had a discussion on this topic a little while ago:
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=65118.0
-
Our septic tank is out the front and as its been there for 44 years, is getting very porous. Ours fills up with rainwater from the road all the time! So yes John they can fill with rainwater! lol
And to answer your question Grinling, no they shouldn't look full up. If rainwater is getting in like ours, it's probably made of brick and they are getting porous. As there are just the 2 of us here, and most of the water is rainwater, Brian puts his foul water pump down there and pumps the water across my veg patch or down the bank so it soaks away.
But even if you get them emptied once a year, that is still cheaper than being on mains drainage!
-
The surveyor said the guttering goes into it as well. Also said it was originally built for a 3 bed and that we would need to be careful. The picture taken makes it appear full and that web sites say about the soakaways and that it causes probs if they are blocked.
Think we will clear out 1 chamber and see what happens.
Live gets very complicated buying a house in a small village.
Thank you
-
Might it heip in the long run if you got a spec for a storm water soakaway, build one to said spec and run the gutters into it thus saving space in the sceptic tank for foul water.
-
Hi Muckshifter, I was going to say the same thing! the gutters shouldn't go into the septic tank, they should go to a separate soakaway, preferably under the lawn or veg patch. No wonder it fills up so quickly!
-
If it's a septic tank (a type of treatment) as opposed to a cess pit (merely a storage tank) then, yes, it should look full.
A cess pit is just a storage tank and has no outlet, so, unless it's leaking, when it gets full you will have to empty it or it overflows. with mildly unpleasant consequences. Addition of rainwater will make it fill up quicker, therefore costing you more for emptying.
A septic tank is a treatment system that anaerobically digests the sewage. Once it is filled, further inlet flow of sewage displaces treated liquor out of an outlet pipe to a soakaway. Hence it will always look full, but that does not mean it needs emptying. As time goes on, it will become more full of sludge leaving less room for liquor, until such time as the effluent coming out of it is sludge rather than liquor. At this point it needs emptying, otherwise the soakaway will become heavily polluted and / or blocked, again with unpleasant (and costly) consequences.
The time taken for it to fill with sludge and require emptying will depend on the size of the tank and the amount of waste it receives, and could be anything from one to several years, but I guess a couple of years would be average.
Whilst it is probably not good practice to allow rainwater / downpipes to feed into it, this will only serve to dilute the liquor within the tank and will not cause it to need emptying any sooner, as rainwater contains no significant organic material and so will not enhance the sludge production in any way :)
-
In that case, I think ours was a septic tank, but is now a cess pit! :D
There is tank 1, which when it gets filled overflows into tank 2. Apparently there is a pipe going from that into the back garden, but when Brian was digging a trench to carry his electric cables to the big shed, he found a very broken very blocked up old pipe, which was probably the one carrying the overflow liquid! ???
-
Might it heip in the long run if you got a spec for a storm water soakaway, build one to said spec and run the gutters into it thus saving space in the sceptic tank for foul water.
A large underground water storage tank with a soakaway for overflow would be even better. :)
-
The idea is to have the drainpipes go into water butts so I can water the garden and future veg plot.
Could I use shower/bath water for that as well?
-
After considering wood burners I know need advice on septic tanks. Read other topics on this, but how can you tell it needs emptying. The surveyor for this property we are buying sent pictures of the tank/s and they look very full. Property has not be lived in since December. Rainwater goes into it. Should it look full?
Thank you
You're undoubtedly paying your surveyor a considerable amount of money, what does he say about the tank and its fullness? (other than "be careful").. once you get your survey you should keep going back to him with questions about it until you're clear on every point he's making. Modern surveys are full of wriggle-room (to make it impossible to sue him for a bad survey) so you'll probably need to cement his feet to the floor and glue the pen in his hands to get anything definitive.. ;)
-
The idea is to have the drainpipes go into water butts so I can water the garden and future veg plot.
Could I use shower/bath water for that as well?
Yes you can. You can get a bathwater diverter system and underground storage tank.
-
doesn't 'grey' water go nasty if you store it though ???
-
I guess these purpose made tanks cater for that, don't know a lot about them. I'd also advise using eco soaps etc, but others wouldn't.
-
doesn't 'grey' water go nasty if you store it though ???
Something I read just earlier today mentioned grey water. It said to use eco detergents and to use it soon as it doesn't keep well ...
-
:)
-
Thanks for the answers everyone. Hubby wants to ask surveyor a few things. Have a builder, roofer, plasterer and a man for the oil boiler going in Wed, so hubby going up to check on things and ask questions and how much!!
-
Of course, ifyou're buying the property, why don't you stipulate that the septic tank is emptied as a condition of the purchase (even better - stipulate that it is inspected for structural integrity as a condition of the purchase - then not only do you get it emptied, but if it's broken, you can order them to fix it as well).
Sorted :lol:
-
Greywater was never meant for long term storage, only very short term, mostly to be used on actively growing veg. In winter, you'd divert it into a soakaway. If you want longterm water, consider the old fashioned cisterns which could be buried in the ground, in cellars or in sheds. This water was used for laundry, doing dishes, and baths. Well water was for drinking.
I'm on a septic tank but I'd never have guttering or anything draining into mine as it would soon fill up too fast. The collection tank is for solid matter to have time to break down before it gets washed down the weeping lines in gentle stages, never to be flooded too fast or too soon before it can decompose into less 'toxic' matter.