Why did drainpipes used to have a box on the wall?

[Commander Kinsey]

Great way to make your land even soggier. I do the reverse and have a sump pump to lower the water table.

[GB]

Yeah right Hucker.

--

[Rod Speed]

Mad. I only water mine when it hasn't rained for a year.

[Rod Speed]

When you have a dam with the hopper the air can't get in.

[Rod Speed]

Don't need to, just check that when the house is built or modified.

Sure, you can see that bodged with a new shed etc when they don't bother to get that approved but that's not that common. Most of those don't bother to put the shed roof runoff into any drain, just let it go onto the garden etc.

[Commander Kinsey]

U-bends mean it doesn't matter if every pipe isn't fresh.

Aren't all Aussie dunnies in the shed?

[Commander Kinsey]

They didn't check mine when I modified it, because I didn't tell anyone I modified it. It's my f****ng house.

Shed, garage, conservatory, not need permission here.

Same here, and with the conservatory. The rain would have ended up in the ground anyway before it was built.

[Commander Kinsey]

If they're past the bend who cares?

What about outhouses?

[Commander Kinsey]

Depends on the size of the plants. Ones that have been there a while have deeper roots.

[Commander Kinsey]

Blockages are caused by toilet paper, not shit.

I thought any toilet was a dunny, no matter if it's indoors or outdoors.

[Commander Kinsey]

Funny how there's so much of it when you clear the pipe. It swells up. A plumber told me Izal didn't have this problem.

ROTFPMSL!

[Clare Snyder]

with good grading and proper construction it's not a problem. The water runs away from the foundation. I don't even have a sump pump There is a little spot in the back of the property that sometimes pools a wee bit butthe rest drains to the street quite effectively from my 1/3 acre.

[GB]

Thanks for learning how to snip posts

Thanks dumbo

--

[NY]

The job is described in census returns in the UK as "gong farmer" or "night soil".

My grandpa, who lived in a small town in the woollen manufacturing area of West Yorkshire, could remember when he was little (so maybe 1910-15) a man leading a horse-drawn cart with a big wooden barrel, calling out "Old Wesh" (wash). This was one of those street-vendor's calls that sounds like gibberish because it's said so many times (as in the Morecambe and Wise "Morny Stannit" sketch). But this man was actually asking people to take out their chamberpots of piss to pour into the barrel: stale urine was used for treating the wool - not sure whether it was part of the fulling process or for fixing the dye into the wool.

[NY]

My parents have a holiday cottage in a tiny village that has no mains drainage. All the houses have their own septic tank (two-chamber sewage treatment unit that does more than just store the sewage, as happens with a cesspit). However to reduce the amount of water that goes into the septic tank, all the grey water is piped to a communal "land drain" that discharges into a nearby stream. I'm sure that arrangement contravenes almost every health and safety and environmental law known to man!

Do many houses have a rainwater drain in the street? I thought that usual arrangement was for there to be a soakaway under the lawn for rainwater, so the rainwater and grey/sewage water never mixed. As far as I know, our house doesn't put rainwater into the septic tank, but pipes it into the same soakaway under the lawn that is used for the outflow of treated sewage water from the septic tank.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The replacement of all in one drain systems by 'rain into local buffering via soakaways or flood ponds' and 'all grey water and sewage to be treated', has been gradually implemented over the last 50 years or more.

There is a massive benefit in terms of flood and hygiene control from buffering rainwater as near to where it falls as possible. or, failing that, to get it into the natural ditch/stream/river/sea drainage systems as fast as possible. The last thing you want to do with it is mix it with sewage needing treatment and risk raw sewage mixing with flood water or overwhelming treatment plants.

There is an argument that grey water might be treated separately, but in the end a three way system is a bit too complex, and there is no telling how many people pee in the shower, or flush rotting food down the sink.

[GB]

He is a known troll. Just put him in the k/f and move on.

[Commander Kinsey]

I've lived in Scotland my entire life and detest all their silly words. They should learn to speak proper English.

[Commander Kinsey]

What is this "census"? I thought it was something done a long time ago and they'd stopped it in modern times. But Wikipedia claims it happens every 10 years in the UK. Why have I never been asked to fill it in? Do they just randomly sample people? I'd fill mine in incorrectly, they have no business collecting that data.

[Commander Kinsey]

Every time I've walked near a septic tank it has stunk to high heaven. They're a disgusting invention.

I thought all streets had those - where do you think the rainwater goes that flows off the road?

Soakaways don't work, not in Scotland anyway. The land is already waterlogged, you can't shove more into it.

How would a soakaway prevent that? Every house I know of (apart form old ones where it's all one pipe) have to pipes, one goes into the rainwater drains and meets up with water flowing off the road, and the other gets treated. Rain into the rivers, grey and brown into the sewage treatment plant. All a soakaway would do is to put less into the rainwater system which goes straight into a river anyway.

You must have a huge lawn. I couldn't soak that much water away. The lawn is already full of rainwater that landed directly on it, you can't add more to that.