Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms winter projects??

Luddite .... not a drainage expert but I don't think rainwater goes through the same systen as sewage ..... tho there would still be some environmental impact (saying that, there is with every single thing we do from flying halfway round the world to breathing in and out sat on the sofa!) .... in most rural properties the gutters just go to soakaways.

K

K,

older housing the rain water goes down the drain to the sewage works, our 1980s house does this.
Modern houses the rainwater has to go to a soakaway and not into the sewage.
I'm not sure when the change was made and it is not retrospective, thank goodness.

Peter

Ours is a rural property built in 1978 and all the rhones go to soakaways within our boundary.

We have the highest water rates in the country so I'm rather pleased about that, the current government gives us all a £20 refund per quarter which is welcome.

On really old houses, depending on the underlying geology everything goes to soakaway apart from the soil pipes. Our cottage (pre 1600) originally had just a privy in the back garden which had a gravity drop to a brick septic tank. Somebody installed indoor plumbing I would guess in the early part of the last century and routed some of the other waste water into the tank, but our scullery sinks still drain to soakaways and that's in the new build half of the cottage (1865). Fortunately Cotswold limestone is great at draining so we've never had a problem getting rid of water.

Our rain water goes down the sewer.
Next door got a blocked toilet a couple of years ago. So that his wife could have a bath, he cut a hole in the stench pipe where it comes out of the wall. So then the bath water spewed onto the drive. But only for a couple of years.

It left a white stain down the wall.

He's in the building trade.

Soakaway's for rainwater, septic tank to soakaway for all sink and blackwater, this is commonplace in rural locations around here.
Septic tanks don't operate as well these days because cleaners and bleach kills the bacteria in the tank resulting in less biodegradation.
Ours worked well untill children came on the scene, increased toilet and washing machine use caused the soakaway to fail. We now have a recieving tank with a pump that goes to a herringbone pipework system on the Forrest floor.

Yep .... at ours the gutters go to soakaways ... the grey and blackwater goes to a three chamber septic tank which discharges to a herringbone soakaway in a reed field ..... pretty standard for the country .... we have no kids and use eco derergents etc so the tank works really well. As we have our own well (and rainwater collection system) we pay no water rates at all


K

Interesting chat, now into drainage...(-: I am no expert on the subject though think perhaps Queen Vic`s Albert may have picked up typhoid at Balmoral as the drainage system may have ended up with a foul to drinking water proximity issue relating to distance between foul waste and the well used for drinking water..?

Living a few hundred feet up the valley side with a few hundred feet more above, drainage is ever worthy of consideration and lack of maintenance seems to be the norm with field drains displaying issues in the local area...Shrug..! I converted an out of use and one time piggery aidle tank that for use as a septic tank, as when I bought this place the outflow from the septic utilised the field drainage system which I spent a great deal of time digging up and clearing even though the field was not mine, but responsibility for the tank outflow was and it was used for grazing, less so these days.. As a housing estate was built below the field and the aidle tank outflow was connected to the main drains, so I re-routed the foul water to that tank when I built the extensions and added more toilet facilities in the process... Sigh!

For sure household detergents can kill of the microbial action in septic tanks, apparently the condensate from gas boilers can do much the same and I have two of them, one for UFH and the other feeding rads..?

So there you have it I am taking ages to clear moss from the roof because I do not wish to suffer fabric damage when gutters would overflow because I have grates in the gutter to stop the moss that the birds loosen on the roof from eventually getting into the field drains that would then require to be dug up and cleared again...! It was circa 30 years ago I spent a week or more clearing the one on the septic tank outflow, and I`m not up for that task again, so when the weather allows I can be found up on the roof.... Yeah, you can take self reliance too far....

Perhaps the seemingly extensive moss growth of more recent times could be down to all those folk running about in sports cars for fun or worse still those olde Morgans with V8 engines that have zero cats and emission control systems other than an auto choke....They need to be regulated or taxed off the road...OUCH..!

This is true. However I discovered my water supplier had been charging me for rainwater disposal for 30years even though I had a soak away, they issued a refund that went back about 10-12 years but claimed they didn’t have to go back further than that! Check your bill.

ha ha that got my attention, I am going to go and look at my bill now. Mine is soak-away also.