[bazzais]

Before you dig a new soakaway or anything to do with sewage - dont tell the planners, nor the environmental agency or let anyone who would grass you up see you doing it as amending current systems to new legislation will mean £xx,xxx's of your hard earned money.

[jaykay]

Thanks Bazz - I will be clearing round the area only of course 

[FiB]

re new legislation - I have heard that the Environmental health are starying to send out letters around here to come and inspect ST arrangements.  They will have a heart attack if they see ours (made out of 2 IBCs in series with internal baffles.  All above ground!).  I dont know how the chap that converted this place got it through building regs 30 years ago but pretty sure it wouldnt cut the mustard now!  It works really well thoughg - so if they go on an effluent basis we'de be OK, but I suspect they have a number of 'approved' designs?  Now a new ST... NOT cheap.  Anyone had their system inspected?

[robert waddell]

FIB  they have been bringing in new legislation from the sixty's   i think a fee accompanies any application that is the point and so they know every bit about your crap disposal
your system from the brief description is what is referred to as silt traps very efficient at what they do
it is the biological demand of the water that concerns them  BOD the clearer the water the better

[Fowgill Farm]

JayKay
Don't know if this is same prob you have but sounded like it. OH is a builder and he recently went to see someone with a similar problem and it turned out that it needed something called interceptors between the tank and where it goes out (suspect they catch the cr.. er solids which cause the blockage) It maybe that your pipes/drains just need rodding (if you'll pardon the phrase! ) to clear any yuk and then fit some of these interceptor things, took OH & oppo less than a couple of hours to do think he charged the bloke £80.
HTH
mandy 
Ps OH is always rodding our own drains pig chuds & straw seem to get everywhere!

[robert waddell]

interceptors work as well but only if they are cleaned out   if you fit them and forget them  it is just the same as not having  one fitted 

[jaykay]

Ok, finally I managed to talk to one of the local builders who was involed in putting in the original septic tank and soakaway, and who has added to the soakaway recently.

He says that the pipe from the tank to the soakaway runs along the edge of the road and that the yard drain is not cut into it. Also that he and my ex extended the soakaway a couple of years ago and apart form the problem that it is in a bog (the entire dale is a bog!) it is working fine.

So we think that the yard drain, which is ancient, must also go into a soakaway under the byre, which has got silted up. So we are going to dig an additional channel so that, in heavy rain, when the drain soakaway can't cope, the excess can run into the beck. That's not a problem, since it is only rain.

I am so relieved 1. My house drainage system is fine and 2. There is a simple solution to the yard drainage

[Mammyshaz]

Great news jaykay  just need some dry weather for you to sort it now. 

[SallyintNorth]

Oh, that sounds much better    Very glad for you.  How have you been coping with this torrential madness?

[jaykay]

  are you back from holiday - do you have a good time?

Floods on Thurs, drove through one halfway up the car doors on the way home from work in a panic to get home to check my animals, what with the beck the way it goes. Had to keep going or the water would have come in the exhaust. Scary  Animals all fine 

[chrismahon]

They won't allow any soakaways here if the water table ever comes within 1 metre of the surface. That's both rainwater and septic tank outlet. Current regulations they told me. It' a 'percolation test' that determines the size of the soakaways. They dig a metre deep hole and chuck some water into it to see how long it takes to soak away. In our case it's gone before you can hit the stopwatch because we are on a sand and gravel base.

[jaykay]

Don't think any of the soakaways in this valley would pass a percolation test - except maybe for the occasional dry weeks in April. We probably all ought to have biodiscs with clean outflow fitted but few of us farmy people have enough money.

[SallyintNorth]

are you back from holiday - do you have a good time?

Aye, home last night.  We had a great time, thanks.  I've been warm enough for 24 hours a day for 8 days!  Now it's back to waterproof leggings, fleece, windproof long jacket, woolly hat...    Ne'er mind, Cumbria has its compensations.    (You're one  )
Spent the day washing and then this evening - clipping my Castlemilk Moorits!     What fleece!  I am so made up with them!  Not much of, of course - I'll weigh them but I bet I get less than a kilo from the 4.

Floods on Thurs, drove through one halfway up the car doors on the way home from work in a panic to get home to check my animals, what with the beck the way it goes. Had to keep going or the water would have come in the exhaust. Scary  Animals all fine 

Crikey, that sounds horrid.  Thank goodness you're all ok. 

[jaykay]

Ne'er mind, Cumbria has its compensations.    (You're one   )

   

[goosepimple]

HI Jaykay, don't have time to read all previous replies so apologies if this has been covered.  We had this problem recently and OH had to dig up the entire soakaway - it snakes around a large part of our ground near the river and had become blocked - what happens is that the holes in the pipe are quite a small diameter and because of all the rain etc we are experiencing now they tend to become blocked with bits of gravel / general debris - the holes not being big enough to allow these to escape. 
Your tank is an old fashioned one, not now suitable to building control standards - we have one of these too which we took a long time to realise it is now redundant and there was another type put in place nearby which has 3 manholes to take all our buildings.  The idea of the tank is that it generally soaks away and should never need emptied. 
Blockage somewhere, you just don't want a man who doesn't really know where to start and dismantles everything.