Still have a certain amount of solids build up
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We had ours emptied for the first time after 10yrs, then again after a further 4yrs? The only reason we figured was.
1. I retyred
2. 1 summer was particularly wet so the walnut tree didnt need as much fluid.
The tree sits right next to it and produces lovely nuts (according to the locals who collect them) always holds it leaf longer than the others. Ours is an old concrete box in the ground which is probably very leaky
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Yours drains to the main drain? why have it? the tank will never fill if its draining to a main drain but will if the "soakaway" cant soak away if the soil wont take it
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J
Aha! Funny you should ask!
I of course asked the same question back in 2006/7 when we were designing the house and getting it all organised by Oc résidences.
They explained that the mains drains in the village were "not up to the job as they didn't lead to a proper sewage treatment works" i.e. that they had couldn't cope, but if we pretreated it then they took the run-off away. We had the choice between "tout à l'égout" (all goes off into mains drains) or an "épandage" a typical crowfoot soakaway. (This all turned out to be false-ish.)
We asked for the ads and disads and in the end opted for the "tout à l'égout" as it was cheaper and should need less maintenance, less risk of us accidentally digging into it when we put our orchard in etc.
BUT we hadn't factored in the cost of sewage treatment, which isn't huge but still.
So last summer I got the bloke out to inspect it and explain to me why we had to pay for them to take away sewage we had already treated, and where it ended up.
The answers were a little surprising.
A/ it ends up in a stream cos they don't treat it AT ALL!
B/ you still have to pay as they collect it and take it away!!!
He also opened the second hatch on the tank and said it was OK.
He told us they were building a big sewage treatment place which in a couple of years time should be able to deal with all sewage from about 10 villages.
I didn't ask him if it would cost more for us then!
But my thinking is that when this is up and running we might as well just simply pipe our waste directly into it and use the ST as a second underground water storage tank like the one we already have that collects all the roof runoff. This we use for watering veg.
We are lucky in that we have 3 roofs and the surface area means a lot of run off. Last summer we still had water in it at the end but then we only started using it properly towards the end. (Too lazy to organise the pump)
It is right next to the septic tank as it was so easy for them to pipe everything to two tanks in the same hole and then pipe the run offs the same way. So the whole change should take minimum pipe and disruption.
We also have loads of springs on our land and in fact wish we could pipe the water away from some of them as they flood, particularly the car parking area outside the front, despite us having already put loads of extra french drains down to try to solve the problem.
Still everything grows incredibly well, trees in particular!
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If we had a crowfoot it'd be no problem due to the type and slope of the land. In fact our new neighbours are forced to have this as they cannot put pipes across their neighbour's land like we could. (Right cock up there, well done lawyers!) they recently emailed us to tell us that they had just got the plans for it approved.
All good clean fun eh?
and we are not holding our breath on the new sewage works although our present mayor, bless him, actually does crack the whip and get things done, so it might just happen.