• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Knee Deep In Sh-T is and understatement.

Is it not usual to fit steel access covers in your neck of the woods Scott? We have a massive brick built tank (ex farmyard) and the whole run has about half a dozen metal manhole covers over inspection / rodding chambers. That set up you have looks a bit worrying?
 
AJB Temple said:
Is it not usual to fit steel access covers in your neck of the woods Scott? We have a massive brick built tank (ex farmyard) and the whole run has about half a dozen metal manhole covers over inspection / rodding chambers. That set up you have looks a bit worrying?
Click to expand...
Mine is modern and has access chambers, next doors (the original farmhouse) is covered with a number of long, thick, lengths of stone with the oil tank atop them! Very different systems...
 
Tank is around 70 plus years old. First to get seized up on these is the inspection lids to allow for pumping then the underside of the tank top deteriorates due to sewage gas. Adrian, a good fix is a steel plate. I will talk to the welding shop in town and see what they have, if not then concrete. Older tanks here are concrete and the newer ones are a plastic composite.
 
AJB Temple said:
Is it not usual to fit steel access covers in your neck of the woods Scott? We have a massive brick built tank (ex farmyard) and the whole run has about half a dozen metal manhole covers over inspection / rodding chambers. That set up you have looks a bit worrying?
Click to expand...
Looks worse than it is, would like to go with a new tank but no budget for that expense. Does your system also have a field bed?
 
If it makes you feel any better ours is 14'/4.25M down to the top of the tank. A 3' diameter concrete culvert goes straight down to the middle of it so both compartments can be accessed. There is a pump down there to pump the digested liquid to a septic mound (kind of like a concentrated field). Fortunately it has a rope on it to pull it up if it has any problems. I call the septic pumper truck every two years religiously to remove the solids so I don't have any problems. The whole thing is about 10 years old so I'm certain it will outlive me.
Looks like you have to make honey out of dog ****. My sympathies.

Pete
 
We are in rural France, 9 houses in our village, we each have a septic tank (fosse). Quite a few years ago, the EU told France that they had to get everyone onto mains sewerage by a certain date. That date has long been and gone.

The fosses are supposed to be inspected every 5 years. We have been here 3½ years and nobody has come a-knocking. Ours cannot possibly meet current regs. Even our neighbours', round the corner, no longer complies and it is only a few years old.

The cost of a new system would be, I think, 10-15K. The fine for non-compliance is 40€. So it is entirely possible that we could spend a lot of money, only to find a JCB digging up the road outside our house the following day. They did our local town a couple of years ago.

I'd rather put my money into replacing the bathroom, so that the toilet flushes properly, has a stench pipe so that it doesn't stink*, the drain doesn't gurgle and it doesn't take 30 minutes to fill the bath.

S
*Who in their right mind installs a toilet system without a stench pipe? I blame the previous "DIY enthusiast".
 
Ooh, I can play, too. Our new house has an undersized tank and field for the number of bedrooms. The previous owners agreed to pay for an upgrade to the tank and the field as a condition of sale. The work should start at the end of the month.
 
For anyone interested how the other half lives...

The link is

but for some reason it is showing as Unavailable. I don't understand.
It does play properly if you play it direct on Youtube. Search VIP toilets. It was 19 years ago...


S
 
Last edited:
Duke, I share your pain. We had a tractor go through the top of our sewage treatment plant.
 
A friend had a delivery of firewood 15 years ago and the truck drove over the tank even though it was conned off.
Major pain in the but.
 
Shouldn't that be "Major pain in the butt."? :LOL:

Pete
 
Been a long day, needed to get this done today as tomorrow is rain all day. Thanks Adrian for the sugestion of plate steel. Luckily I made it to the welding shop before they closed at noon. While I went to the bank for cash he cut a 4'x5' piece of 1/4" plate steel from a 4'x 8' sheet.
 
Last edited:
Inspector said:
If it makes you feel any better ours is 14'/4.25M down to the top of the tank. A 3' diameter concrete culvert goes straight down to the middle of it so both compartments can be accessed. There is a pump down there to pump the digested liquid to a septic mound (kind of like a concentrated field). Fortunately it has a rope on it to pull it up if it has any problems. I call the septic pumper truck every two years religiously to remove the solids so I don't have any problems. The whole thing is about 10 years old so I'm certain it will outlive me.
Looks like you have to make honey out of dog ****. My sympathies.

Pete
Click to expand...
Pete, what is the reason for your septic tank being 14' below grade?
 
duke said:
Pete, what is the reason for your septic tank being 14' below grade?
Click to expand...
I’d guess it’s to get the associated pipework below the local ground frostline, wouldn’t want your “bobbies” freezing in the soil pipe on the way to the tank. 💩 😣
 
duke said:
Pete, what is the reason for your septic tank being 14' below grade?
Click to expand...
Doug pretty much has it. The house is a walk out in the front with the soil in the back being 6' or 8' higher than the front. Pipes exit below the footings and then slope down to the tank about 40' from the house. I'm told the frost line is 10', or that is how far I had to have the screw piles driven when I built the decks.

Pete
 
Duke’s problem with a damaged cesspit cover reminded me of an event that took place many years ago. After leaving school, I worked for firm of auctioneers as an auctioneer’s clerk. As well as assisting at auctions, the clerk’s job as to do stock takes prior to preparing the auction catalogues.

On this particular occasion, I wasn’t involved but my colleagues, Bill and Len, had to go to a farm somewhere near Buckingham to prepare a stock list prior to a sale of the farm machinery. Bill was holding a clipboard and writing down the information provided by Len as they crossed the farmyard which was partly covered with snow. Suddenly Len realised that Bill had disappeared and there was a lot of splashing and cursing going on to the side of him. On looking down, Len realised that Bill had fallen through a rotten plank covering the slurry pit and was frantically treading “water”. To Bill’s disgust, Len bent down, took the clipboard that Bill was holding above his head and went and put it in a safe place before finding the farmer and getting a rope to pull Bill out. Bill was sent to the farmhouse to take a bath and the farmer lent Bill some clean clothes.

Unfortunately, the farmer was small and stout whilst Bill was taller and less rotund so the clothes were not a good fit. Hence, the next day Bill went into the local town to find a men’s outfitter to buy some new clothes. He found the shop and waited for it to open. At opening time, the blind on the front door went up, the man inside took one look at Bill in his ill-fitting clothes and promptly pulled the blind down. It took some time for Bill to be able to explain his predicament.
 
Sorry you've had this to go through Scott... but you're getting on with it. Bit of a wake up!

Back in 1981 we moved up to West Yorkshire to renovate an old farmhouse/cottage on the edge of Saddleworth Moor. Part of the renovation was to put in a septic tank and decided on getting a 'Klargester' reinforced fibreglass one. Had to have a huge hole dug out in the sloping field it was going in along with the channel for the pipework. Those from the toilet etc., had to be dug by hand by muggins here at the back of the house... getting the correct slope to meet up was a challenge. The Klargester was the easier option with not having to cover over a pit - although it was done regularly using railway sleepers.

All that ramble over... you repair work has brought back memories of life up there doing the renovation 😁...

We also had to build a water retaining tank - the water supply was fresh spring water coming out of a hole in the hillside. With the help of the builder that did the roof (and some other jobs) he built the tank from concrete blocks - 8ft by 4ft (internal?) and 7ft deep. For the cover on that he used a sheet of plywood with support posts, made a manhole area and we poured concrete on top - 4" thick. After it had cured we removed the posts and ply so he could render it all round to seal it. Used a pump to pump the water into a water tank in the roof space.
 
Ten years ago we had a flow problem in our field bed, keep in mind the age of the setup. Dug from the tank outlet to the non existent field bed , WTF. All that was there was a straight run of clogged pipe running 200 ft. So the next day I excavated for a proper field bed with 4 runs off the main line. Luckily the only cost was for the leaching pipes, scarfed the gravel from the railway bed and already had other materials. Back in the day there was no record keeping or permits required. I had asked the previous owner where the bed was, he pointed and said somewhere out there!
 
Inspector said:
Doug pretty much has it. The house is a walk out in the front with the soil in the back being 6' or 8' higher than the front. Pipes exit below the footings and then slope down to the tank about 40' from the house. I'm told the frost line is 10', or that is how far I had to have the screw piles driven when I built the decks.

Pete
Click to expand...
Yes then the need to have it down below you frost line.
 
The recurring amusement with grp bottle tanks and klargesters is placing them in the pit then filling around with readymix concrete.
You forgot to fill the vessel with water beforehand and it quickly bobs up to the surface.....
 
fuse said:
The recurring amusement with grp bottle tanks and klargesters is placing them in the pit then filling around with readymix concrete.
You forgot to fill the vessel with water beforehand and it quickly bobs up to the surface.....
Click to expand...
I packed around the one we put in with the stones/shale etc., that was dug out to put it in the ground. We didn't have any trouble from it - nor did I hear of any troubles from the guy that bought the place when we moved to Somerset. Didn't forget to fill with water either 😉😎😂🤣
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top