Hi,
We moved into a property about 9 months ago which has a large brick built septic tank (it used to service 2 cottages, but now just ours). The previous owners said they'd never had any problems with it and had never had it emptied in 10 years.
After several days of really heavy rain, we noticed a slight smell in the garden, and then found that the tank was full to the top. Taking the manhole covers off, I found both the inlet side and outlet tanks full as well. The tank discharges the grey water into a ditch in our paddock, which still appears to be running, although when I tried to push drain rods up the discharge pipe I found it was only 3 ft long, and the water seems to seep through to it through the ground, as if by magic!
Does this sound like a case of just needing the tank emptied, or is there a problem with the discharge? Is it possible it's just been overwhelmed with all the heavy rain? Should there be a pipe running all the way to the ditch, and is it possible it has collapsed?
I'm really sorry that I don't know how these things should work, but I'm just a little confused that there still seems to be water discharging from the outflow pipe into the ditch, but there doesn't appear to be a pipe connecting it to the discharge pipe from the end of the sewage tank (there is one there as I managed to get about 20ft of drain rod down it!)
I hope this makes some sort of sense to someone!
Many thanks
We moved into a property about 9 months ago which has a large brick built septic tank (it used to service 2 cottages, but now just ours). The previous owners said they'd never had any problems with it and had never had it emptied in 10 years.
After several days of really heavy rain, we noticed a slight smell in the garden, and then found that the tank was full to the top. Taking the manhole covers off, I found both the inlet side and outlet tanks full as well. The tank discharges the grey water into a ditch in our paddock, which still appears to be running, although when I tried to push drain rods up the discharge pipe I found it was only 3 ft long, and the water seems to seep through to it through the ground, as if by magic!
Does this sound like a case of just needing the tank emptied, or is there a problem with the discharge? Is it possible it's just been overwhelmed with all the heavy rain? Should there be a pipe running all the way to the ditch, and is it possible it has collapsed?
I'm really sorry that I don't know how these things should work, but I'm just a little confused that there still seems to be water discharging from the outflow pipe into the ditch, but there doesn't appear to be a pipe connecting it to the discharge pipe from the end of the sewage tank (there is one there as I managed to get about 20ft of drain rod down it!)
I hope this makes some sort of sense to someone!
Many thanks