Sewage Waste Treatment Tank / system

[Ed_MK]

Hi All,

 

I have read a lot of the older posts on BH regarding these, and wondered if anyone had any recommendations.

I had planned to put my new build onto Mains sewer, and for those that have read my other posts ..the plan was to 

channel through parents land to get to the closest access....moving them from an old brick cesspit too

 

Sadly, the lateral that should have been there ..isn't and after spending a few hundred and digging up loads of their garden
it appears "anecdotal" tales of the mythical ...spur to all properties ..is just that ...a distant race memory from the 1970's

 

What led us to believe that there MAY be a lateral or spur there is the neighbours connected several years ago ...but this is where
a can of worms well and TRULY opened ...apparently that connection is not "legal" according to the water board and no work or application was filed
and that i cannot connect to that anyway as it breached this rule and that and the other

...they will now be contacting the homeowner as they have never received a penny in sewer charges .....OOOPS! ..Well how was I to know? (sigh)

So now the alternative is for us to "core drill" at 2.7m deep at Main sewer which is about 20m away across a path, green verge and yes ...a road.

I have had a few quotes and to be honest ...After everything is done ...I doubt i will have much change left from £15k-£17k ...Which is a killer for us.

 

So I am back to thinking about an alternative ....We have a decent back garden (or will have) and i suppose the front is possible also ..

We do KNOW about the older brick cesspits ....and to be honest ..we were not impressed ...emptying at least twice a year and then having to rod it 
several times also and being stood up to the knees in well ...PIT & SHISS ....Not i deal ..well of course this pit is 40 years old ...

 

I am hoping there is a modern equivalent that doesnt smell in summer and that needs minimal maintenance

 

...OH, and keep the council happy.  Easy? 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2018 by Ed_MK

[dpmiller]

How much space do you have for a drain field, or do you have access to a watercourse?

[Ed_MK]

hmmm.

 

no watercourse ...

 

rear garden is about 100ft long ....gets narrower as it get further away .

widest point about 45ft ....narrowest is about 20 foot 

 

But i have already planned for a load of polystorm crates in the centre of it for top water 

 

what do you think ?

 

[ProDave]

The basic rules are you have to find somewhere for the treated water to go.
 This usually mean a soakaway (or more correctly an infiltration field is the correct name)

 

To design that you need to know more about your land, you need to know the percolation rate.

 

So, dig a hole 1 metre cube (i.e 1 metre deep and room to get into)  In the bottom of that dig a hole 300mm cube.  Put a stick in this hole with a mark 75mm up from the bottom, and another 225mm up from the bottom.

 

Fill the 300mm hole with water. When the level drains down to the first mark, start timing. When it gets to the bottom mark, stop timing.  From that you can work out the percolation rate of the ground, and then knowing the number of bedrooms work out the occupancy and calculate the area of land needed for the infiltration field.

 

Then look at your local building regs for the limitations on position, e.g here the infiltration field must be kept 5 metres from a building, 5 metres from an boundary,. and 10 metres from a road or watercourse.

 

Then you can work out if you have enough land to do that.

 

If not I am afraid you have to stump up for a connection as new cesspits are not allowed.

 

If you can get that percolation time figure I can talk you through the sums.  It might be handy to work out where an infiltration field might fit in the plot first and work out the area you might have available,  it might be obvious from that it won't be possible.

 

If your ground is poor draining or has a high water table an above ground filter mount might also work but you will have a garden with a large hump in it.

[Ed_MK]

Well the ground is really good ...12 inches of loamy dark soil and under that its just feet and feet of gritty soil mixed with sand
very easy to dig and build on (so I am told) ...no clay or anything like that ... when it rains it dries up FAST...

 

..but i fear i will NOT have the space required to live up to the "distance from border" ....The land is a DIAMOND shape ..elongated on one side.
and my house sits in the FAT bit of the middle ...which is about 14m Wide.

 

...but then of course it narrows up FAST ..so to keep it 5m from both sides will be ...challenging if not impossible ..if i take 2 paces out of my back door (or where it WILL be)
then I am already stood in a bit that is 10m wide ..the more i walk ..the narrower it gets

 

...hmmm

 

[Ed_MK]

Does anyone know if there are rules regarding

 

1. How close the drainage field can be to the waste treatment tank ?

2. Is there a rule regarding the drainage field ..in relation to other drainage fields ...i.e Poly-storm for top water ?

3. If they can they SHARE a combined soak-away ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ProDave]

Speak to your building control, I honestly don't know the rules under English building regs (anyone else?)

 

Up here it's possible to phone them and speak to the "duty building control officer" to ask a question, or download the whole lot and get reading.

 

There should be pages of information on "infiltration fields" that show you how to do the percolation test an show the distance limits

 

EDIT (following your second post)

 

You can't share a soakaway so say front garden for rainwater soakaway and back garden for foul soakaway.

 

There will also be a minimum distance from buildings etc to the treatment plant. The soakaway can start immediately from the treatment plant unless there are different limits (e.g. here the treatmernt plant only needs to be 5M from the road but the soakaway must be 10M

[joe90]

Well I went for a vortex which I am discharging to a ditch that is dry some of the year. Their website is very informative, have a read.https://www.suppliesforfarmers.co.uk/vortex-eco-sewage-treatment-plant-p-16979.html?gclid=CI2mrNP0v9MCFQcq0wodbKYB8w

[readiescards]

Sure the Vortex require you to have service and emptying contacts? I was recommended a well known plant by the builder for our holiday cottage barn conversion but it needs expensive regular servicing and emptying as well as consuming electric. My own house has Clearfox which requires nether contacts or electric but does need a lot of space and does not have the capacity to handle two properties

[joe90]

33 minutes ago, readiescards said:

Sure the Vortex require you to have service and emptying contacts? I was recommended a well known plant by the builder for our holiday cottage barn conversion but it needs expensive regular servicing and emptying as well as consuming electric. My own house has Clearfox which requires nether contacts or electric but does need a lot of space and does not have the capacity to handle two properties

 

Well it says that but there is nothing in place to make you do it!, the license from the envoironment agency also says this must happen but I am yet to find out how they enforce it. Yes of course it will need electric ( vortex uses very little) and they all require emptying at some stage but in my opinion the vortex ticked more boxes than some.

[Ed_MK]

Well, i need to get some alternative to the Mains sewer..because it looks like that
won't be a financially achievable unless i leave the roof off

 

I have a drawing of my land and house, with measurements

 

Border 2, 3, and 5 are neighbours
Border 4 is family

and Border 1 is along a 25 foot across rough grass and hawthorn border ...until it reaches the road

 

So I am looking for a Rainwater soakaway and a Sewage Solution in my spare area.
 

I was going to put the rainwater crates in the middle of the back garden 5m from sunroom.

But now if i have to squeeze another gravel pit .....it might be tight.

 

what is a shame too is that the grass is lovely meadow grass ...and looks great...

..but ii suppose thats development

 

 

PS
I know the measurements for Border 3 is cocked up ..the rest are OK
I think B3 should be 23m ...i was measureing in the rain with a blunt pencil

 

Edited April 8, 2018 by Ed_MK

[markruth]

We are putting a treatment plant into our build, the important thing is percolation tests to be carried our on your land, this will determine the length of soakaway and more importantly if your ground is porous enough, this was a requirement for the environment agency 

[ProDave]

Anyone looked up the English Building Regs clearance distances yet? Without that we can't proceed.

 

Another alternative we looked at is the Puraflow system. http://www.symbiotictrading.com/products/puraflo/

 

This discharges the effluent into containers full of peat and it filters out of the bottom. They are laid on a bed of stones and gravel so what drains out soaks into the ground. They can either be buried or sat on the surface in that case acting like a packaged filter mound.  When we looked that solution would fit the very small amount of space we had available, we would have needed 2 crates of peat for our 3 bedroom house and the percolation rate of our soil. But for some unspecified reason building control rejected it, and at that point SEPA granted us a permit to discharge into the burn so we stopped looking at surface discharge.

 

Can you find out who owns the 25ft border between you and the road? and see if you can get permission to put the soakaway under there. This is quite common up here, indeed the soakaway for our old house is under the field behind it.

[joe90]

This is where I got my info from https://www.wte-ltd.co.uk/wastewater_legislation.html 

[ProDave]

From the above link:

The main provisions of these regulations are:

• The Sewage Treatment Plant must be sited more than 7m from habitable property
• The soakaway must be a minimum of 10 metres from a watercourse, 15 metres from a building and 50 metres from a borehole or spring.
• The soakaway must be designed to BS6297: 2007 and all percolation test results must be submitted. 
• The discharge point shall be more than 10m from habitable property
• If the discharge is to a soak away a sampling chamber must be provided before the soak away. These are available from WTE Ltd..
• Soakaway drains must be constructed in the aerobic soil layer, i.e. within 700mm. of ground level.

So the plant must be 7M behind the house but the soakaway must be 15M behind the house.

 

No mention of distance from boundaries, but check the 15M to the adjacent properties, depends how long their back gardens are (hopefully at least 15 metres)

 

If you can go up to your boundaries (check with BC) you will have roughly 15 metres by 5.5 metres, widening a bit towards the house. That's something like 80 square metres available, which I am sure is plenty (our previous 5 bedroom house needed 85 square metres)

 

The crucial thing to look up to confirm that is whether you can indeed install the soakaway right up to your boundary

[Gone West]

10 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The crucial thing to look up to confirm that is whether you can indeed install the soakaway right up to your boundary

 

My reedbeds are right next to my boundary as is the soakaway from the reedbeds and the BCO was happy with the layout.

[Jeremy Harris]

I got away with having our treatment plant around 1m from the boundary without any quibble from building control.  They agreed with me that as the discharge was going into the adjacent stream, there was no point in trying to locate the unit 7m away, which would have placed it in the centre of our lawn.

 

The general feeling I got was that there was no real concern about treatment plant placement, as they knew that, unlike old cess pits, there's no perceptible odour problem from these things.  I'm pretty sure the "7m rule" dates way back to the time before we had treatment plants, so it's well worth having a chat with your BCO, explaining the compromises you need to make and seeing if they are sympathetic to your problems.  If you're lucky, as we were, then there won't be a problem.

[bissoejosh]

When I looked into this I found the regs fail as the two rules regarding septic tanks and treatment plants don't match up.

The 7 meter rule applies specifically to septic tanks and not packaged treatment plants in terms of the tank/plant location - in theory the treatment plant could be right next to the house unless I've misunderstood.

 

Under the treatment plant 1.54 regs state discharge water should be 10m from any building / watercourse with no mention of boundaries. However 1.27c which regards drainage for septic tank mounds claims 15m from any building so unclear.

 

In summary I rang our BCO, explained it didn't make sense - he agreed and we've come to a sensible conclusion that works for everyone as per @JSHarris comment above.

 

[joe90]

9 minutes ago, bissoejosh said:

When I looked into this I found the regs fail as the two rules regarding septic tanks and treatment plants don't match up.

The 7 meter rule applies specifically to septic tanks and not packaged treatment plants in terms of the tank/plant location - in theory the treatment plant could be right next to the house unless I've misunderstood.

 

Under the treatment plant 1.54 regs state discharge water should be 10m from any building / watercourse with no mention of boundaries. However 1.27c which regards drainage for septic tank mounds claims 15m from any building so unclear.

 

In summary I rang our BCO, explained it didn't make sense - he agreed and we've come to a sensible conclusion that works for everyone as per @JSHarris comment above.

 

 

Gosh that is interesting, my treatment plant is 7mtrs from our build as I understood that to be correct, it discharges ( via a rumble drain) into a ditch that’s running for 10months of the year, ( however I am yet to get the ok from the envoironment agency ?).

[bissoejosh]

Unless I've misunderstood the regs all I can see specifically about treatment plants is shown and highlighted on the attached screenshot. The various discharge rules are scattered between septic tanks and soak away sections.

 

 

 

Edited April 8, 2018 by bissoejosh

[joe90]

But how come Jeremy,s discharges to a watercourse and mine to a wet ditch?

[Jeremy Harris]

5 minutes ago, joe90 said:

But how come Jeremy,s discharges to a watercourse and mine to a wet ditch?

 

I had this discussion with the BCO.  His view was that as the EA had given me a consent to discharge to the watercourse it made this section void.............

[ProDave]

The rules do seem confusing and do vary a LOT between Scotland and England.

 

At the end of the day, you can only install what your building control officer will agree to, and it does seem he has some flexibility.  So in this case I would approach my BC officer with a proposal to site the treatment plant 5M from the house discharging into a soakaway that starts almost immediately the other side of the treatment plant (allowing room for a sample chamber) and see what he says. You still need that percolation test to determine the size of the soakaway and therefore how close you need to go to the boundary to achieve that area.

 

Up here a treatment plant must be 10 metres from a watercourse, yet my neighbour (of our old house) has installed one just 2 metres from the burn. It has not been completed and signed off, so I still don't know if this has been agreed with BC or if he is going to get a nasty disappointment.

[Roger440]

Not wishing to make matters worse, but if this is a new build, you must apply for planing as well now (since 2015). As far as i can tell this is because they will no longer permit a new sewage treatment installation if a sewer is available within 50 meters.

 

If you are replacing a failed septic, thats a different story.

 

However, be aware that a lot of your area is a protected groundwater area, so, you cant as i understand it, install a new sewage treatment plant without specific EA apprval.

 

Im not far away from you and have researched this to death. Firtunately, i just need to replace what i have and am outside the problem area, and certainly no sewage main withing 50 meters!

 

[Roger440]

On 08/04/2018 at 20:14, ProDave said:

The rules do seem confusing and do vary a LOT between Scotland and England.

 

At the end of the day, you can only install what your building control officer will agree to, and it does seem he has some flexibility.  So in this case I would approach my BC officer with a proposal to site the treatment plant 5M from the house discharging into a soakaway that starts almost immediately the other side of the treatment plant (allowing room for a sample chamber) and see what he says. You still need that percolation test to determine the size of the soakaway and therefore how close you need to go to the boundary to achieve that area.

 

Up here a treatment plant must be 10 metres from a watercourse, yet my neighbour (of our old house) has installed one just 2 metres from the burn. It has not been completed and signed off, so I still don't know if this has been agreed with BC or if he is going to get a nasty disappointment.

 

Down here you cant use a soakaway. Discharge to water course OR drainage field. Not that most BCO's actually realise i will add!