Whereabouts in 17 are you Kim?
Well, weāre in California, the house we are (hopefully) buying is in the Matha area.
We live 10 mins from Matha so just ask if you want help with anything.
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Thank you Stella. So there is no law as my husband thought. However, there is the issue of what we agreed to - and that included the installation of a new system but it didnāt include the emptying of the old puisard, and my understanding is that is very expensive. So we will have to add a āclause suspensiveā to the compromis stating the sellers will empty the puisard?
Frankly, it is up to you to decide how far you want to āpushā them. I do not know how much to empty the muck outā¦ perhaps someone can shed some lightā¦
(Mmmā¦ Iāll go check some papers to do with a project last yearā¦see what I can find.)
Yay! A local contact! If you donāt mind me asking, are you British or American?
Iām a Brit.
@Genevieve1964 ā¦ canāt find the paperworkā¦ but newcomers had to have the Fosse and drainage completely redone. I know that the emptying was included in the complete projectā¦ and the overall price was acceptable to themā¦ so I donāt think the emptying can have been too expensiveā¦ does this make senseā¦ Iām getting tired and my fingers are typing back to frontā¦
The term puisard I take to mean a āsumpā, we had one installed in our front garden a couple of years ago to help drain excess rainfall.
Quite often an old property will have a concrete holding tank rather than a fosse with a filter bed, maybe thatās what they really mean, itās certainly worth insisting that itās emptied.
If you end buying the house I can recommend someone local to put a new system in.
Since you are a local, do you happen to know any electricians in the area? We may have to have one go to the property (with the agent) and give us an estimate on repairs. We did not have time to do this before we left France and the Dossier Technique has indicated some issues (sadly the owner told us the wiring was more recent than it actually is).
Through our business we use a particular electrician and he speaks excellent english so that might work.
Well if you are in France Stella it is 10 pm but here it is 1:00 in the afternoon, so feel free to come back to this tomorrow or when you have time. We did get an estimate on a micro-station installment (there isnāt enough land to do a fosse toutes eaux) but the estimate explicitly says voiding of the cesspool (puisard) is not included in the price, which is 10,000+ euros. My husband is feeling like we shouldnāt be responsible for emptying their puisard, to put it tactfully. There will be enough repairs to do in the house once we have purchased it.
Excellent, Tim, that is very helpful. After 2 1/2 years of looking at houses to buy in France (and nearly coming close once before) we know way more about French sanitation than we ever thought possible (it wasnāt a bucket list item, big surprise) but we are babes in the woods when it comes to French electrical systems. And since we know from previous inquiries that it costs about 4 - 5,000 euros to rewire a house we are feeling a bit jumpy about the write up in the dossier. A friend in Paris has given us the name of her architect so weāll see what she says about the report.
That seems a bit high unless itās a huge house.
Ten thousand for a fosse is very expensive, are there real problems involved in the installation? Once youāve got your ā¬10000 reduction on account of the fosse get two or three other quotes for putting in a new one. So long as the existing tank isnāt huge a local contractor will pump it out for a couple of hundred euros, not hugely expensive in the scheme of things. They do it all the time.
A micro-station is more expensive than a normal fosse.
220E - 250E is the going rate to empty a 3000L fosse in 17.
Micro stations might be more expensive but a neighbour of mine had a microstation installed for about half that a couple of years ago. Itās definitely worth getting a couple more quotes.
A neighbour and a friend both have their houses for sale and neither of them can find their fosse.
Mmmā¦ SPANC have presumably already been involvedā¦ (?)ā¦and they canāt locate it ?? (Mind you, itās not down to SPANC to find itā¦ itās down to them to check it.)
Locating can often be sorted by digging down around the outside walls in the area near the bathroomā¦ and then digging/tracking the pipework in the ground, from then on.
However, it is not unknown for the bathroom to be in one spot and for the pipework to cross, somehow, inside the house and leave via a completely different spotā¦this can really involve some detective work.
Again, presumably, they have talked with neighbours/mairie/anyone who knew the property beforeā¦ ??
Is it possible that the drainage simply goes into a deep well (within the house, in the cellar perhaps) and then drains gently without anything obvious ??
Sorry lots of questionsā¦ but it is a common problem and Iām trying to recall what I have heard from other folkā¦
Our drainage went into a tunnel, hidden/obscured deep in the stone wall/floor in our cellarā¦ and heaven knows where it ended upā¦ we are now on mains drainage, sharing a reed bed that serves the whole villageā¦ and we can breathe a sigh of reliefā¦ phewā¦
When we first visited our local Mairie - we said we had bought our house - the first thing we were presented with was the layout of our non-conformiing Septic system which we found to be pretty accurate. We have since replaced it all.