Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Chatting => Chatting on the Plot => Topic started by: grinling on November 30, 2018, 20:12
-
Anyone who has a septic tank which drains into a ditch etc will have to install new drainage.
Luckily ours drain onto our land.
-
We share one with our neighbours. This is news to me. Can you please provide more detail or a link to the new regs ? Thanks
-
This has enormous consequences.Some iInfo here: -
https://www.wte-ltd.co.uk/septic_tank_general_binding_rules_2020.html
Sewage treatment plants are not cheap, as we found out a few years ago. Without being too much of a harbinger of doom, the implications will include insurances, the Emvironment Agency checks (they were in fact extremely helpful to us), and as stated in the article, house sale requirements (getting back to the defunct 'Home Packs' so despised by just about everybody), and of course the upheavals in many gardens. Different local authorities will have a myriad of hurdles to overcome too. Note that the dates of when your house was built are key issues, you may not have to do anything!
I do recommend that this is taken seriously, as we had a very worrying six months, not knowing where it was all going - literally! There are quite a few really good companies around these days, who specialise in installations, and you can bet that they'll be pretty competitive now. Also their products will become just enough to be accepted; but that's the old 'builder' in me, seeing the way it'll probably work...
Sorry to subscribe to unwelcome news - I don't normally do that..:0(
-
Ah, we are off the hook. It was installed well before 1983 when BSI standard was introduced
-
Us too - phew! Our old cottage probably had an outside loo until the 60's when a septic tank was installed which drains into one of the dykes here and still does.
-
these septic tanks are they what they call an onion that's buried in the ground or are they the ones that need emptying each year or when full? sounds like its an overflow pipe and where its running
when we owned property that we rented out in the process of having some building work done the builders blocked the main sewage pipe and there was all sorts of problems when it blocked up the local environmental people where involved our hand where tied good job we had a good insurance that paid for it to be repaired
all these new enviromental rules are sometimes a real pain and cost comes to mind because anything that involves digging some thing up is going to be at a price
-
There are different types of septic tanks and one looks like an onion but some need emptying annually, and others work by having separate chambers where the waste goes in the first one, overflows into the second one where it starts to nurgle, then the final chamber has an outflow pipe enabling the resultant liquid to leach out into the surrounding land or watercourse.
-
We have one of those but the liquid still can't go out into the watercourse without further treatment.
The first tank is the aerobic digester that has an air pump blowing bubbles through the stuff all day every day to allow the bacteria to start their work. The solids settle and the clearer liquid makes its way to the outer rings. When it gets to a certain level, a pump starts and takes a measure of it out and passes it to eh second anaerobic digester stage. For many homes this would be a drainage field with the old gravel and perforated pipe but ours is in a mound with a deep container of coconut fibre.
There is no aeration in this second stage so the other bacteria start chewing and get rid of all the soluble waste such as ammonia and bad bacteria. After it has passed through this second stage it is then clean enough to pass out into the soil or ditches without any further processing.
The main tank needs emptying once every two or three years and the second stage gets refilled once every five to ten as the coconut composts down.
When they installed and tested it, apparently what it was putting out was cleaner than the local streams (which suffer from all the wildlife and farm waste of course). Not that you would want to drink untreated stream water anyway cos of all the intestinal visitors you would would pick up...
-
The 'I have an ancient right to pollute local watercourses' is hardly an environmentaly good attitude to take in the 21st century.
The wildlife in our rivers and streams has a hard enough time with abstraction , farm chemicals and treated domestic sewage as it is.
Saw a few stinky ditches in the 70s and 80s was not impressed then and far less so now !
-
It's a difficult one, would it really be right to suddenly tell people that they have to spend thousands to bring a system up to date, that could have been there for hundreds of years? I don't know what the answer is, but many people just wouldn't be able to raise that kind of money.
-
I shouldn't worry too much Mum!
I'd reckon that the various Borough Councils would have enough on their plate explaining away their poor drainage systems, like for instance, Tunbridge Wells during the floods! And how on earth are they going to source the drainage for all the new developmets we have forced on us in Kent! Hawkhurst is over-run already!
There are far more pressing requirements than the Environment Agency coming after individuals! Just be aware of scaremongering firms! They'll be at it like water filters, double glazing and solar panels in a few years time!
Just for the record, we get ours seen twice a year for a check up, and every two years for an empty out, and the cost is almost the same over the twelve months, as if we were paying the rates!
I even used to service it myself when things went awry, and the occasional rod-through isn't really a problem! The air pump is a great little bit of kit, I rather like servicing it, as it's supposed to go for years non-stop, but now probably tomorrow, it'll get the hump...
Looking through these posts, I'm sorry if I set the hares running, it wasn't meant to make friends here nervous..:0(
-
The 'I have an ancient right to pollute local watercourses' is hardly an environmentaly good attitude to take in the 21st century.
We should make the sheep and cattle use flushing lavatories connected to the sewage system too :D
-
The 'I have an ancient right to pollute local watercourses' is hardly an environmentaly good attitude to take in the 21st century.
We should make the sheep and cattle use flushing lavatories connected to the sewage system too :D
Believe it or not Alan, there was a company developing a way to control the grazing habits for cattle, and then of course, the 'outflow'!
I kid you not! It was an elctrical device attached to the cow's tail, which somehow regularised all the actions normally associated with bovine livestock!
I've tried to research this over the years and got nowhere, but as a trusted chum told me all the gen, I naturally believed him...
-
The 'I have an ancient right to pollute local watercourses' is hardly an environmentaly good attitude to take in the 21st century.
We should make the sheep and cattle use flushing lavatories connected to the sewage system too :D
Humans going Al Fresco is far better for our waterways than an overflowing cess pool ! ;)
-
Just a larger view on this issue. I don't consider animal or treated human waste going into watercourses as pollution because they're organically based and therefore naturally break down in the soil over time which is beneficial to many plants and other organisms. Some fish and crustaceans actually thrive on it. There are far more inorganic pollutants getting into watercourses by whatever means which cause far more harm.
-
Just a larger view on this issue. I don't consider animal or treated human waste going into watercourses as pollution because they're organically based and therefore naturally break down in the soil over time which is beneficial to many plants and other organisms. Some fish and crustaceans actually thrive on it. There are far more inorganic pollutants getting into watercourses by whatever means which cause far more harm.
As a keen angler i can assure you that animal waste including the human animal is a serious pollutant even after treatment !
In my home town the River Wey was healthy and natural above the water treatment plant but this changed below the outfall . Green waterplants flourished upstream as did insects and fish while downstream the riverbed was lifeless apart from a carpet of slimy brown algae.
Untreated animal waste is much more dangerous deoxygenating water and killing all aquatic creatures.
Well diluted waste water may be ok but todays need for water abstraction means there is often much more effluent than clean water in a stream or river.
-
Ah, I take your point. To me it seems a difficult balance between what happened in the past and today's way of managing pollution.
-
Our septic tank discharges clear odourless liquid into a drainage ditch about 500 yards away. The ditch does not flow into any natural stream and in fact it almost dries up completely in summer. In Spring it teems with tadpoles and other wildlife
-
Your ditch sounds just like the one we use which also nearly dries up in summer except it drains into the sea as do most of the other tidal dykes here because we live amongst a farming community. They also have a lot of tall reeds which help to filter and purify the water, and they possibly assist in reducing the nitrogen levels to prevent unwanted algae etc.