Hi all
We've been on a bit of a journey with our drains since moving in to this house....
I won't bore with details. But in a nutshell, the previous owner had diverted the waste from the kitchen and washing machine so that instead of going to the septic tank it went either down the side of the house or into the rainwater soakaway.
We've got things back to how they should be now, more or less. WM and kitchen are now reconnected to septic tank. However, there was a hell of a lot of sludge and muck in the rainwater soakaway pipe which we had to clean, and part of the process involved finding and exposing the soakaway itself.
Here's some pics:
1. The house itself, showing all the roof space which collects the water for the soakaway (to give an idea of volume):
2. The soakaway when I first exposed it.....:
3. The soakaway after removing more rubble and soil to get to the end pipe:
Same from further away (to get perspective):
Same, close up:
I don't really know much about soakaways, but it struck me as a bit odd that so much rubble was above the end pipe rather than below. Is that normal?
Aside from that, is it possible to tell from these pics whether things are as they should be? I don;t want to fill it all in only to find out later that there's a problem.... I also have no idea how big the soakaway is. I don't want to expose more unnecessarily, and certainly don't want to expose more and cause damage by doing so.
If anyone can offer any help or advice I'd appreciate it hugely. Would be nice to get the garden back to normal at some point and to have peace of mind that everything is ok in drains department!
Cheers
Max
We've been on a bit of a journey with our drains since moving in to this house....
I won't bore with details. But in a nutshell, the previous owner had diverted the waste from the kitchen and washing machine so that instead of going to the septic tank it went either down the side of the house or into the rainwater soakaway.
We've got things back to how they should be now, more or less. WM and kitchen are now reconnected to septic tank. However, there was a hell of a lot of sludge and muck in the rainwater soakaway pipe which we had to clean, and part of the process involved finding and exposing the soakaway itself.
Here's some pics:
1. The house itself, showing all the roof space which collects the water for the soakaway (to give an idea of volume):
2. The soakaway when I first exposed it.....:
3. The soakaway after removing more rubble and soil to get to the end pipe:
Same from further away (to get perspective):
Same, close up:
I don't really know much about soakaways, but it struck me as a bit odd that so much rubble was above the end pipe rather than below. Is that normal?
Aside from that, is it possible to tell from these pics whether things are as they should be? I don;t want to fill it all in only to find out later that there's a problem.... I also have no idea how big the soakaway is. I don't want to expose more unnecessarily, and certainly don't want to expose more and cause damage by doing so.
If anyone can offer any help or advice I'd appreciate it hugely. Would be nice to get the garden back to normal at some point and to have peace of mind that everything is ok in drains department!
Cheers
Max
