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The Environment Agency set limits to the strength of the pollutants being discharged into the soakaway. If they are too high then you can be prosecuted. Recently installed septic tank installations should have a formal consent that specifys this. Many earlier ones do not but it does not mean that you cannot be prosecuted.
Peter Crosland
Only for a new installation. Many old buildings have a ditch to collect roof rainwater and lead it to the nearest stream.
It's a compound that enables the bacteria to multiply (Similar to yeast) Obtained from D.W.Jones,Wild Briars, Lyth Hill, Lyth Bank, Shrewsbury. Shropshire SY3 OBS
Cost is £16 for two commercial packs
Blair
We put in a 4000l spetic tank 2 years ago and apart from some smell as it started up it has performed flawlessly and waters the orchard in dry spells very nicely. You are meant to empty it out every 5 years but in my previous years of owning these I have never done this and never had problems with them. Only thing we have to do is make sure the mother in law does not use bleach and make sure people know they shouldn't put sanitary towels down the loo. The worst bit is that we empty the grease trap every year which is a truly awful job and one that tends to have a very strict rotation as to whose turn it is!
is there any reason why this shouldnt be done?
You have obviously never opened a septic tank! The liquid needs to be removed as well as the solids. The method suggetsed is a non starter.
Peter Crosland
You are allowed here to discharge into any 'public watercourses' privided e.g. klargester is used. Our clay is so impermeable te cionceot of a soakaway is laughable.
Ours just dumps into a dry ditch.
Handful of crystallized bacteria.
We don't bother. A good curry works just the same after its been through you.
NO. You overload it.
Those go to a catch pond, or soakaway, or into storm drainage if you have it.
We have a pond.
The estate down teh road duig a bloody great pit. Its a grassy hollow execpt when it really rains.
No, run your 'foul' (grey) water into the sewage tank. Only rainwater should go to the soakaway,
Use a water softener to keep soap/detergent quantities low, and let it rock...most detergents these days are realtively biodegradeable.
Things to avoid are indigestible plastics and some petrochemicals that will not emulsify with the detergents.
I've put caustic soda. hydrochloric acid, and paint thinners down mine. Seems OK so far. In the end it all cancels out - the acids and alkalis do and the solvents and the deteregents do. Just make sure there's lots of water going through when you bung in anything too nasty.
Nor bleach either. Provided you have a resonable amount of acid to neutralise it.
Actually the ideal thing is to run it to anywhere it can get back into the groundwater system uncontaminated.
Soakaways or ditches - makes little odds. Both are acceptable.
Where is the grease trap situated in the system I don't think I have one but maybe I have . Where do I look? Blair
"solids" is a bit of misnomer it's sludge and as a septic tank is anerobic very smelly sludge.
Usually between the house/feeds and the tank. Really gives the kitchen waste a chance to cool down and solidify so it does not gum up the tank as a whole. Cleaning is a very ugly business. It is usually about 50cm across under a small manhole cover but that depends on the size of the system. Different countries in Europe have different regulations (and indeed different water companies) so you may or may not have one.
Mike is right, when I contacted them they were completely uninterested. I was particularly worried because it is going via my property into a stream and thence into the Trent River. They, nor the council or local water authority wanted to know!
The inside of the tank may well be anerobic, and harmfull to health. I would not go inside without an exterior airline, and two similarly equipped people on the outside.
As most septic tanks are to be found in country property where a decent size garden is the norm and neighbours are country folk with an appreciation of the ways of nature rather than city bred with a belief that everything natural should be legislated against and controlled by a raft of beauracracy (apologies to those who don't fall into this generalisation) then you should have a marked advantage. The best time to do a planned clean out is Autumn so the garden gets most benefit from the winter rest period. There will be a liquor on top of the solids (well more of a pasty silt than solids actually). In most cases this can be baled or pumped out onto a bit of fresh dug ground followed by the silt. Do the silt progressively by baling/shovelling into the trench as you continue digging. Allow the buried valuable source of Nitrogenous compounds to decompose and weather through the winter then when spring arrives your soil is valuably enriched. Your garden produce will be wonderfully enhanced. Until the development of the chemical industry sh*t of one form or another was the only fertiliser to be had (long live the Nitrogen cycle) rather than the unnatural stuff plants are dosed with nowadays.
Klargester ain't anaerobic.
And even my old tank had non smelly solids on top
The pong was underneath in the slurry.
Given the upcoming drought I would have thought people should be encouraged to get the water into the streams.
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