There is a lot of information on line, especially from North America, where they have regular problems with flooding and snow melt. They recommend using the system as little as possible and waiting for the water level to drop, then having the tank emptied and checked for damage.
Does anyone have a septic tank system that has been flooded due to heavy rainfall?
Did the system return to normal functioning when the flood level dropped?
Have you been advised to modify your installation by local experts? Did this solve the problem?
If I were a young man, I would would consider it and also solar heating, but in my late 70s it is getting a bit late for long-term payback projects. Otherwise I would abandon this place entirely and build a new environmentally friendly house on the highest part of our plot. That would be the most sensible solution.
We installed it originally for Stage 1 of building when we were still in a caravan for a handful of months. Then it was the easiest place 'to go' next to the art studio.
And it was always very handy for outdoor parties or when the dear husband had just gotten off the tractor from mowing all of that grass. It actually made the house sell faster, too!
Well done guys! I was wondering how long it would take for this thread to descend to the expected lavatorial level...... ;-)
Boots or waders? I have spent several periods involuntarily wading back out of them between villages. Some are nearly a metre deep, but even the standard 20cm-ish is deep enough to get into real mess. Boots in the Mekong heat? No way, I'd rather have the leeches and scrape them off with my trusty Swiss Army knife any day.
I chuckled thinking about this then had a spasm of laughter. One of the research team's equivalent of our forenames was Dung!
I could never quite bring myself to trying to explain why Anglophone bosses introducing him had chuckled and probably did every time they presented him to somebody.
In the sixties I was part of London Division RNR whaler pulling team and we frequently went overboard in the Thames around Blackfriars- it's rather cleaner now! (I see that my earlier post contains at least one typo for which apologies!)
Two hairy bikers have been seen planting rice in Thailand recently but everybody was wearing boots- no boots but leeches in the Philippines!
...but I like to think of then as the "Society for Prevention of Average Common Sense."
Gads that made me laugh!
Never heard of SPANC when we lived in France because we rented an apartment that was hooked up to mains drainage in St. Girons. Doesn't sound like a bunch of people that you'd want to get on the wrong side of -- much like our own councils in Australia.
Our water is from the river, water plant beside the hydroelectricity dam less than 1km away. The whole area is porous limestone and gets in everything. After a couple of years we more or less have self starched sheets and towels that scratch whilst drying :-(
We get a little more grease than you in our bucket, four of us so it figures. But wipe or what the grease gets there somehow. With the lime the lumps. But I reckon there is more oil or fat than the manufacturers of bio products make out there are, washing liquids especially.
I walked into the edge of a rice paddy in Viet Nam not knowing why my Vietnamese colleagues were flapping their arms about a distance too far away to hear them. It was, as I found, where the village deposits its 'waste' from pigs, chickens, who knows what and humans to spread in the fields after rice harvest when the water is let out. It was a good 80cm deep and looked like a nice solid bit of ground. Since that day I only ever kept to the paths on the banking between paddies.
I have been in a fine mess doing sewer installations in my time, but that one was... Choose your own words.
Great story David. We had a great time on our Nile hols. I was actually allowed to "drive" our Felucca to Elephant Isle. Damned heavy things & not very agile. Our captain grounded it after telling me I was not sufficiently au fait with it & taking over. Some of us had to go over the side to ease it off the sandbank but fortunately it was, by Nile standards, clean water.
Brian. I'd like to know how you manage to put " no oils or fats down the sink or in the dishwasher" 'cos assiduous as we are in wiping stuff with kitchen paper etc.I still clear a half medium bucket of grease out of the grease trap every few months & there is normally just the two of us here. Never get solid lumps & I don't think there's much, if any, grease in the fosse. We don't do anything regards treatments so everything else seems tickety boo. Water here is med to soft.
On the same broad subject but an entirely different river, being the Nile, I was with my boat and sailing averse first wife returning from the Elephantine Island at Aswan in a dhow which was suddenly hit by a strong wind from the desert which caused my wife to panic. She insisted on immediate landfall which the captain strongly advised against. We grounded before the shore so being the true gent I jumped overboard in my white linen suit to find I was by now standing up to my crotch in the open outfall of the city sewer. As I turned to warn my wife I found that she had already jumped so I had to "catch" her, which I managed to do. I had to carry her ashore and find a barouche in which I deposited her. The driver prohibited me from riding myself, so I had to walk ashamedly alongside back to our floating hotel, to the general amusement of the many pedestrians and passers buy. I threw my suit away and next day was confined to the sick bay for several days. I heartily recommend that entering sewers and the like is left to the accustomed professionals.
I suspect it is a hard water thing. Our favorite Welsh building inspector said you can't have too many rodding eyes and inspection chambers. Good advice for anyone installing a new system.
Sounds good, but unfortunately our house is in the lowest part of our land. Our Mayor says that we shouldn't worry about occasional freak weather, but that is what they are saying in Miami where they are famous global warming deniers and some think they will pay dearly for that!
My best bet will, I think, be to improve the disposal of roof water and see what difference that makes. Perhaps digging a ditch at the side of the property would help, passing the problem on to others further down the hill.
Must have been more like the Styx than the Eden!
We had a rather rogue builder first install our system - using the wrong sand for the filter etc etc...
12 years later we have replaced it (following a lot of wading around in sewage by me) with an enclosed second chamber filled with replaceable coir. This does the same job as the filter bed, but is enclosed and drains off further down our land - pretty pure water too by the time it's all been cleaned by the coir.
The guarantee is 15 years on the chamber, it's discreet, and you can get the whole lot (tank and chamber) all linked up for about the same price as just the chamber. Easy to install - the usual big hole, some levelling and some gravel - and no problems at all with water table levels etc - and it doesn't need pumps, either!
The model we used was the Epurfix from Premier Tech; there are a number of models and are SPANC-approved (just check with your local chaps just in case...things vary!)
No more wading around for me, and I would use the same sort of system in any next house I may have, too.
This happened annually to friends of mine who lived near the river Eden in Kent, where the local river flooded frequently. Most locals had just knocked holes in the sides of their brick built septic tanks and never paid to empty them. Things have become more difficult- and expensive! Ours used to flood but luckily we have been connected to the mains now. However it means I have to water the garden more.