Wednesday 26th June, I spent most of this day travelling, in my van and my two helpers for the next few weeks.

The trip is 433 miles door to door, the goal before the boss arrives for 9 days was to  get the caravan (home) connected to the treatment plant. plus get ready for concrete. other blogs to follow.

To connect the Static I needed to install the treatment plant, install some of the drainage for the pods, confirm with BC he is happy and basically crack on with the long days that far north.

Previous work had the pit dug out of the rock, so the basic plan was to sit the plant onto compacted, level, stone and backfill with gravel. Then put a top of concrete to hold the whole thing down.  In the 8 weeks the pit was open 

there was no filling of the pit, so I was quite happy the rock was porous, but couldn't be convinced in heavy rain it wouldn't fill with water.

The rock at the bottom wasn't going anywhere, so didn't see the point of fully filling with concrete. I backfilled with stone up to around 350mm from the central rib of the TANK (a Tricel Nova 12P) then put 3 cube of concrete over this. this concrete is now bonded to the rock sides to the pit and if my tank floats its going to have to bring the bed rock with it.

The observant of you will note it sits a little higher than the ground.  This was for two reasons. - to assist with the outflow depth for the rubble drain, and secondly I am going to raise the level of the ground in this and the rubble drain area, to soften the impact of the house, that will sit further East on slightly elevated ground. (I also buried a 5 ft earth rod in the concrete for the future)

I got my levels from the pods to the tank a distance of approx. 46.5M, and worked out my fall, the levels of the land assisted this, i..e the pods to the West and the House to the East of the treatment plant are both elevated, with the treatment plant in the lower part, and near the existing rubble field drain. (our initial survey and plans worked. Phew)

The trench for the waste pipe was also used for services (Water, telecoms, electricity, Ethernet) , backfilled with stone and fill from site.

I then laid the pipe, with a fall, and supported this on flat rocks. 

Connecting lengths of pipe together on your own is not easy, (I asked the dogs to help, but the lack of thumbs became an issue. )

Top tip, long ratchet straps make this an easy process. the picture below shows this, I broke the length of the run up with branches for rodding points, not required at these distances, but makes sense and easier rodding if required.

The ratchet strap is 15 m long, at one point I had two connected together. simply loop the hook around the chamber, or branch and the other end around the pipe you are connecting and a few ratchets later the pipe slides into place.

Once all in place and re checking the levels I used stone (lots of stone) to fill the voids under the pipe, re-checking the levels (falls) and compacting as I went.

I tested this run of drainage with bungs and water manometer.  Building control were happy not to inspect before backfill, as long as I was happy that if it failed the pressure test later that was my issue...

My initial meeting with building control, laid the ground for our relationship, I asked what he wanted, showed him my proposals, chatted about this and that and hopefully from this he could see I wasn't a muppet, so we agreed to move forward with a few photo's here and there and he might pop in at anytime if he was passing. works for me. 

One of the branches that will be a rodding point is doubling up as my caravan connection.

For now the Treatment plant is running by being plugged in. I Will run the SWA cable but this will be powered from a house yet to be built, so for now, comes from a Caravan hook up point, with RCBO protection.

Part two will be the rubble drain this is still work in progress..