Roselea

Category: Sewage

  • Annual Empty and Cleanup of Septic Tank

    We had our Septic Tank emptied and cleaned up today. It was slightly longer than the usual 12 months since the previous service because we had stopped putting down vegetable matter down through our disposal unit in the kitchen.
    We have been monitoring the state of the discharge fluid and we decided that it ought to be done especially since we also had a servicing episode with our air pump a couple of weeks ago where the rubber bellows had split after 7 years of constant operation. See Servicing Sewage Air pump
    The man with his smelly lorry came and this year, he had brought along his narrow 2inch extension tube so we didn’t have to “duct” tape a length of our 68mm plastic pipe and was able to reach down to the very bottom of the tank to suck up the content.
    We then washed around the upper rim to make sure there were no rubbish lingering around.
    All done for another year!

  • Air Pump for Septic Tank was Serviced

    We noticed that our Septic Tank was not “bubbling” away as usual and discovered the Air Pump had stopped operating. It usually is emits a steady hum that slightly rattles the shelf it is sitting on but it was silent!
    Upon opening up the pump, we found that the rubber bellows had fallen apart due to old age. We looked up to when we had previously replaced the bellows and it was about 7 years. It was another 6 years before that when we first bought the air pump.
    So perhaps we should have been conscious of this regular maintenance cycle last year and proactive in dealing with it.
    Anyway, we ordered a replacement kit which comes with new magnets as well and did the necessary repair work.

    Its now humming away again , hopefully for another 5 years or more…

  • Annual Empty of Septic Tank with general tidy up

    The man with the tank, the same lorry and man as last year, came this morning. We attached a piece of 68mm diameter plastic drain pipe on to the massive end of his flexible rubber hose, because his hose has a huge metal coupling unit that is far too big to get pass various internal structural elements inside the septic tank. We started doing this last year and did the same this year as well, and managed to remove almost all the “rubbish”, right down to the bottom of the pointy depths of the tank.
    We then blasted the upper chamber with our garden hose but it wasn’t very messy anyway which is good, and then we washed out the output inspection man-hole chamber (which is painted white at the bottom for easy comparisons and spotting of murky conditions) and flushed quantity of water down and into the leach field pipework.

    Annual Empty of Septic Tank with general tidy up

    Clean-sample-chamber


    The conclusions for this year is that the tank held up much better and didn’t suffer from large foaming events in the last 12 months and we got the cycle time for the clean-out operation about right. When, in several years, we have moved into our new house, we will have a working kitchen with its own rubbish collection chamber to catch the food stuff we put down the sink, this will reduce the large quantity of “solids” going into the septic tank, and we can reduce the frequency of the septic tank servicing task – Phew!!

  • Annual Servicing of Septic Tank

    A year on and it is time to empty our septic tank. The water was starting to go murky so we ordered the man with his smelly lorry to come and suck out all the waste and water from our tank.
    We then gave it a quick wash down inside but it was fairly clean anyway.
    One reason for the tank to be filling up quickly, is for the amount of kitchen waste we put down the sink, lots of peelings, green leaves and chicken bones etc. plus also flowers too!!
    But when we have the main house built, we are having a water trap under the kitchen window, buried in the ground, which will collect up the solid waste in a wire cage and we will dump this on our compost heap instead. This would hopefully extend the life of the septic tank capacity and maybe only need to empty every two years instead.

  • Annual Empty and Maintenance of Our Septic Processing Tank

    The man with the smelly lorry came this morning to do our regular emptying of our Septic Processing Tank. It is almost a year since the last one.
    We then did some pressurised washing inside the chamber and down the pipes going off to our leech field and get everything ready for another year. In fact, we decided that we will book in the next service in 9 months as it was full. We thought that it was a bit soon but we realised that because we put down all our kitchen food waste through our disposal grinder in the sink, this is a large quantity of material and it fills the tank more quickly. We had already had plans to solve this problem when our proper kitchen is built and will collect this kitchen waste and throw it on our compost heap instead.

  • Septic Tank Serviced and Workshop Tidied Up

    This morning, we had the Septic Tank serviced and emptied. We then gave it a once over, cleaning the various inlet and outlet pipes to make sure they were all cleared and flowing nicely. Also, the electric air pump was opened up to check the moving parts were all clean and in good working order.

    Then, after lunch, we carried on with tidying up the workshop, sorting out the tall rack of sheet materials and throwing away little pieces and putting similar items onto their own shelves. It has been rather jumbled up over these last few years and now it is nice and neat again!!

    The Workbench is now ready for the commencing of creating our External Wall Legs which will be tomorrow – at last!

  • All Trenches Filled!

    Today, again with marvellous weather, we finished filling in the trenches
    that has the sewage pipelines in. The trench cutting across the driveway and
    footpath was carefully layered with regular compacting with our now fully
    working vibrator machine.

    Stephen-Compacting-Trench-1

    Stephen-Compacting-Trench-1

    We used some of the left-over hardcore material on the last 8 inches and
    finally topped with two to three inches of the recycled asphalt material.

    Driveway-restored

    Driveway-restored

    The driveway and footpath now looks as good as new again!

    The rest of the trenches were filled with the dugout sandy soil and
    compacted in layers as before, the only exception to this process, is the
    kitchen pipeline because it runs outside the footprint of the house and it
    can settle down over the year by itself!!

    Pipe-trenches-filled

    Pipe-trenches-filled

    All there is to show for this hidden vital groundwork, is the forest of 5
    sticking up sewage pipes!!

  • Started Filling in Trenches!

    This afternoon, we started putting all the dirt and soil back into all the
    trenches of our three sewage pipe runs. We began at the trench cutting
    across our driveway, so that area can be made safe again for us and
    visitors.

    But we hit a slight problem with the petrol engine driven vibrating machine,
    it wouldn’t run for any length and Stephen took it apart to clean out the
    tubes and pipes etc. It now runs nice and smoothly again!!

    Shaun was clearing the driveway of piles of dirt and also scraping a layer
    of soil off the surface where silt have accumulated over the last few years
    when we had a river of rain water washing down the Loke carrying dirt and
    silt from the area, and depositing it on Our driveway!!

    Tomorrow, we will get on with the filling process in earnest!

  • Approval from Inspector!

    This afternoon, our building control inspector, Ken, came along and look at
    our sewage lines. He went around asking questions about what that line is
    for and what this sewage line is for, but he was quietly pleased with our
    quality of our work and gave us the nod!!

    We can now start filling in the trenches and rebuild the ground back up
    again, like the driveway!

  • Third Pipe Run all Finished!

    Today, in the morning, we finished off the 3rd and final pipe run. We bedded
    it down with the gravel and used the laser level machine to determine and
    make sure the slope is maintained all the way along the sewage pipe!!

    Pipe-3-finished

    Pipe-3-finished

    Now we await for the building inspector, Ken, to come and have a look, and
    with his approval, we will refill all the trenches back up!!!