crooksey

I don't think I have seen a cesspit on a planning application for years, septic tank maybe. Cespool is the very last option (no drainage and all foul is stored in one tank). They usually only permit new build's with cespool's if they can prove all other options have been totally exhausted. You can install a cespool with no planning on an existing property. This is usually when an older house with a cesspit/septic tank has failed due to a poor drainage field or one that would not meet new regs and the only option would be a cespool. For new builds now you generally need to prove the reasoning behind having a cespool as they are a "worst case" option.

The local council and the EA actively try and discourage cespool installs, they are terrible for the environment with all the emptying they need. They will be much more receptive than you think, I don't mean to be rude but you are going about this all wrong. Usually before/when you apply for planning, you include detailed proposed foul drainage plans. I don't see how you plan to get planning without having this done first and frankly your planning agent needs talking to as they will know this. Get proper percolation testing done Get a drainage engineer to design your system Submit a detailed drainage proposal with your planning application. As part of the application process, the local council will review your drainage proposal and basically say yes or no. If they say yes and it has been designed by a reputable drainage engineer, then building control will have no issue with it. Then you can take the building control and planning approval to the EA for the final confirmation. This is how it usually works with new build/one off homes, all be it the EA is rarely involved but they will want the planning approved with a drainage design approved by the council drainage officer.

What exactly are you asking? A new sewage plant installation can usually discharge directly to a river or watercourse, as long as you can access this from within your boundary. If you have a septic tank from 1974, your existing drainage field will not be suitable as it stands. Septic tanks cannot discharge to a river. If you have a culvert that runs to a river, a new sewage plant should be able to use this (if you own it) to discharge. You have given a very vague description of your site and problem, probably best to have a qualified installer come and take a look. Anything done incorrectly could land you a heavy fine.

I could be wrong, but this is what building control are meant to check for. They are meant to know the rules and regulations, and hence why they stipulate certain things. You pay them to check all of this, if they have missed something, they should cover you. If building control has missed it but still passed it, I am sure that there will not be an issue. Depends what your buyers solicitor advises them at the end of the day, I have worked on houses/plots where the buyers solicitor has flat out suggested not to proceed with the sale, due to un tested cesspool/pit etc. Both times the buyers ignored their advice and everything was fine. Off mains drainage scares a lot of people who have never directly dealt with it. I wouldn't worry yourself (at this stage). Simply reply to your solicitor stating, all work was carried out and notified to building control, please find attach a certificate for the completed works, please also find proof of the last de-sludge and any comments received from the people emptying. All your buyers solicitor will be looking for is a clean bill of health for the system. If it hasn't had a de-sludge recently, I would offer to get one done and get a health check done on the plant, this should keep everyone happy.

Just to add, if you go with graf tunnels, you will need a graf plant, as the graf plant's specifically reference this in their data sheets. Graf also do further filtration systems, such as a chlorine or sand filter, if you have these then the EA may be *more* happy.

You will need to speak to the EA, but they are usually pretty good with these now (I know off a few contractors who have used them on jobs). Providing you have a detailed design, justification for using one and acceptable percolation tests. You mentioned "Southern Water" so you may be on the south coast, take a look here: https://www.homeseptic.co.uk/infiltration-tunnels/ These guys are based in the south (I have no affiliation) but have some good information and also carry out installations.

Depends, if you can use infiltration tunnels, then you can drive over it. Local ground conditions, building control etc will want to approve the design for this first. Also depends if you have a septic tank or STP. If you have septic tank, no chance, as you need the aerobic air content from the soil. If you have a STP then you *may* be able to lay a re-inforced concrete slab over the drainage field. This will probably massively depending on the winter water table level of the site, percolation value and percentage of the drainage field that will be covered by the slab. It won't be boggy (if it is, it has been sized incorrectly or the percolation testing has been done incorrectly, giving a false reading). Most domestic properties have it under their back garden and you would never know its there. They don't smell or cause any issue to the soil (when installed correctly). Its all down to design and local conditions, speak to a qualified drainage engineer, get your percolation testing done (professionally) and then give your designs to your building controller, (they will usually just say yes or no).

Ultimately it is down to building control, if they have signed off the installation then you are fine. Any lender or house insurance provider will simply want to know if any notifiable work, has been carried out correctly and signed off by building control. If you are selling, re-insuring or re-mortgaging, just pass on the building control sign off certificate. Some jobs I have worked on, the customer opted for a sewage plant when they were closer than 30m to a mains sewer, but for whatever reasons, the costs involved to connect would have been four times the price of the sewage plant installation, they have involved building control and been signed off without issue. There is a case for everything these days, installing a pumping station for raw sewage is a bit of a feat and can leave lots of problems if the pump fails. Ultimately all you do by connecting to the mains foul sewer is send your raw sewage to a massive sewage plant further down the line.

Any sewer pipe that is owned by the water company is there responsibility, it may not be owned by them, easy way to tell is request a sewer map from them for that area. Chances are it isn't owned by them and its just "there", or it was an open ditch that someone put a culvert in years ago. If it isn't on the sewer map, get a CCTV survey done, see where it goes to and check with building control and see what they say.

Gypsum liquid screed has many problems (surface laitence, drying times to name the first few). You can get traditional sand and cement screeds, mixed with additives to make is strong enough at 50mm over PIR insulation (PCT XTreme is a good one) that offer a great thermal mass and heat retention.

If you can expose or trace that land drain with CCTV survey, I am sure a decent building controller would approve it. Especially if using a good quality treatment plant, aslong as the water is of a good standard and can be taken somewhere all year round, thats all the matters. You will also need to check with the owner of the surface water sewer.

@cheekmonkey graf do great sewage plants, maybe speak to them and see if they can reccomend anyone to design a system with their tunnels. I also agree with what @saveasteadinghas said, sometimes you need to dig a bit deeper to get to the "better", espically if the site has had a previous life has farmland/yard etc as it may have up to 1m in topsoil/made ground from other locations (seen it a few times).

No, you would just need to pump it, no different to having a pumping station for raw sewage where you are lower than the main sewer. All I would say is have a failsafe pump, it will one day and there is an age old expression "Sh*t flows downhill". With a site that large is there no watercourse there to discharge to? Depending on the length of the run needed to the drainfiled, there may be cheaper solutions.

Wildlife mitigation is always about biodiversity net gain, I imagine (and speak to your planning officer) you may be able to remove the need for a pond if you can show or implement other features to positively impact the local bio-diversity, stating that you already have plans to re-cycle the rainwater through the use of rainwater harvesting which will limit the amount of actual rain entering this pond. Alternatively you could look at something like a graf chlorine filter or a marsh ensign UV filter to treat the effluent from the plant, dump that into a 10,000l holding tank (that also takes your rain water) and then have this discharge to the pond. Whether or not this is suitable all depends on building control, my vote would be to instruct a private controller as a local council controller will just read you the regs and have no further discussion. What type of soil do you have is the ultimate question here, as if you have soil suitable to take a drainage field or infiltration tunnels this will be the best bet. If you are on heavy deep clay, then don't even attempt to design yourself, commission percolation testing and system design, you may even need a borehole (to which the application can take up to 2 years to process). Most firms that empty septic tanks etc also usually do an install service and will have good knowledge of local ground, give them a call and I am sure they could help. Good luck.

50kw total consumption for the whole house seems about right in this cold weather (12/12) for a heat pump and all other appliances. My heat pump alone uses this much in this weather.

I have just looked at your other thread, If I am honest I can see a few issues. You have quite a big pipe spacing, with the UFH not in a screed, with wood flooring floated over the top? UFH works best when pipes are encapsulated in a thermal mass (screed). This retains heat long after the UFH has been turned off, I turn my UFH off and the room stays warm for hours as the heat is retained in the slab. Yours is just heating a void underneath your flooring and wood is not a good conductor of heat. For the most efficient UFH install you would want: PIR insulation, UFH (pipe spacing 125mm if possible), floor screed (50mm min). When your UFH is turning off, your heat will not be stored anywhere as you have no mass to retain it (looking at your pictures).

That is very strange, it would usually be the UFH works but rads dont get warm. Have you checked your manifold, is each port opening when you are calling for UFH? Is your UFH pump kicking in when you are calling for UFH? What UFH do you have, what insulation do you have beneath it and what is your pipe spacing?

How many kwh per day are you using and what are your issue? The honeywell home should just be calling for heat. Usually the hot water is wired direct to the heatpump controller, most heat pump installs I have seen/come across simply heat the tank automatically when it drops below a certain temperature, its not like a traditional system boiler when you run it at certain times of the day. Log burners are additional heat sources, I rarely need to use mine, but when we have an outside air temp of -6, even if you had traditional gas boiler, its going to be warmer inside with the use of a log burner. Keeping your flow temp as low as possible will use less electricity and be much easier for the heat pump to work at temperature with the low outside air temps.

An average day, I use about 40-50kw a day for heating and hot water. My wife is home all day, and kids have baths with heating on all night, so it uses a fair bit. Upstairs we still have traditional steel radiators, which again we will replace with aluminium ones, but haven't got round too yet, again next year this should help and reduce my flow temps further. This is a 5 bedroom house and we are "mid" renovation, so some rooms have no ceilings/heating, so this should be reduced when we are finished. We don't have any mains gas in our village, so this heat pump replaced an old LPG tank and boiler, so considerably cheaper than buying LPG. I am hoping to have solar next year, which should help quite a bit.

My radiators in the bedroom are calling for heat on a timer, I have them on constant between 5pm and 7am, got two young children so have the house heated all night. Especially when we are -5C here. And we are mid-refurb, the rooms below the kids rooms have no heating in at the moment, so colder than they would usually be. UFH downstairs I wired a thermostat to each zone, so calls for heat as and when needed.

My heatpump runs at 35-38 degrees normally, these last few days I upped it to 45 as 38 didnt give us enough heat for the rads (upstairs) but 38 was still plenty for the UFH. I turned off weather compensation as my lowest water heating flow temp is 35 degrees, which is fine all the time the outside air temp is above 0. But when it drops below, It takes me 10 seconds to increase it from my phone so more efficient to leave it off and run at the lowest flow temp I can.

Might be worth looking at a sewage plant, as depending on local authority the installation of a plant and drainage may be considerably cheaper than a connection cost.

At the end of the day, its all down to what building control are happy with. If you have a percolation test, calculated with roof area and pitch, you can easily calculate soakaway sizes with approved calculators. Good luck.

Usually drainage fields by design are "circular" and feature multiple "trenches". He probably wants a single trench as its easier to dig, but usually a building controller will want a traditional drainage fileld. 14m3 is a massive rainwater soakaway, is it staying as an open trench or is it getting filled with soakaway crates? Or even slotted pipe and shinge backfill? If you need a sokaway that big (14m3) I would be seriously worried about your percolation as that is massive for rainwater. Usually for a remote newbuild I would expect rainwater to go into a tank (for harvesting) then the excess/overflow to discharge to a 2m3 soakaway or to watercourse/ditch if you have one nearby and permission.

No mains gas or sewers, call it what you want, but not completely isolated, we have incoming mains electric and water. 60mm wasn't actually correct, I should have just said PIR, this hasn't really been decided and am waiting to choose a floor screed (as thin as possible with best performance) and then work out how much insulation I can fit below it.