Septic tank at home experiences?

[whatageareyou]

I've seen a house I love but it's off the mains. Oil central heating but also a septic tank.

Could anyone share their experience of living with one?
(I'm not handy at all so would need to to entirely run itself)

Thanks so much

They need to be regularly emptied or the system will fail - how old is the system and when was the last emptying? Is the system ancient, old or new (under 15 years)? You can hire a system inspector (which I would). Where is the system? On a hill with a nearby down slope is safest, at the bottom of a hill is worst (but workable with care). Lots to find out!

Not me but a friend had one for yrs .
Check when last emptied make sure everyone follows the rules about what goes into the system.
How many houses share it and what arrangements are as well.
Her story about the day it over flowed and all her tampons popped up still makes me laugh .
Only person it could have been was her .
But bar that and it was very due an empty she didn't raise it as an issue when I was looking to buy somewhere that had no mains connection.
Good luck

No biggie, we had ours emptied every six months on a rolling contract, so we didn’t even need to remember, they just do it and invoice, price is about 135, but still way cheaper than being on mains sewage.

we recently changed ours to a water treatment plant, and have it emptied annually but serviced every six months. Again still cheaper than being on mains sewage.

have it checked out and ensure all is fine and compliant, the folks who empty it can confirm via seller. Past that. I’d not give it a second thought. Well other than you can’t use bleach.

Sorry id also add some folks go years without emptying them, it’s no saving in doing so, all the shit becomes compacted and irs a huge huge job to empty it. Best getting it done on the regular.

edit, one of our neighbours does this, he has it emptied when you can smell it. Doesn’t save him anything, no idea why he doesn’t just put it on a rolling contract. They need to chip the shit out.

I’m guessing you don’t have one? As this is not right. Bottom of a hill is great as you have gravity. On a flat it uses a pump. And yes of course it needs emptying or it will over flow.

I'm in Spain and we have a septic tank with a soak-away - it just works. They're very common and don't need emptying.

We also have oil central heating which isn't wonderful as it can be quite expensive - I have a friend in England also on oil fired central heating and she uses about £1000 of oil a month as her house is huge with no insulation. Can you find out the current owner's running costs? It shouldn't be that big a deal as you can upgrade to heat pumps at a later date I would imagine.

Thanks, but yes I have had one in each house for over 30 years. Bottom of the hill, the leach field doesn't get much movement as you are At The Bottom Of The Hill. At the top of a hill you get much more movement as water and leachables move downhill..

Have had one for years. It's no bother. We get emptied every 6 months which is about £140. Serviced every year. Occasionally it needs a r repair but we have a good local company who we use. We've never done anything to it ourselves.

We are a family of 6 and it is also shared with our neighbours who are a family of 4, so more frequent emptying but shared costs.

We have one. You literally wouldn’t know. We have small water bills because you don’t have the sewage part. We have it emptied once a year, was always around £100 to have it emptied but the last few years it’s crept up to about £130. Takes the man about 25 mins to empty it.

We did. It was easy, although we did redo our soak away ourselves. We didn’t used harsh detergent/cleaners or bleach and had it emptied once a year. Had the same man empty it once a year, which was easy although stinky for an hour or so.
As it is your own simple system, you aren’t at the mercy of idiotic neighbours putting wipes down the toilet or blocking the sewer with wet plaster - so cheaper and less annoying!

What? Whenever we have changed ours and when irs emptied, and our neighbours, the companies always state if you have your tank at the bottom of a slope it’s optimal. As gravity moves the waste. I habe no idea what you’re on about about movemement and leachables except to say it has never been a primary consideration for any company advising.

we pay £200 for a tanker to come by and empty it out with a pipe twice a year. They have to run a fat hose pipe think across the garden. Other than that it doesn’t bother us at all.

The way a septic system works is: solids stay at the bottom of the "tank" unless pumped out periodically; the leachables and water move out of the unit through holes and gravity moves them down into the soil but it works best if they are also moving down hill with gravity - you see water likes to move down not up. If you are at the bottom of a hill the surface water competes with the septic leachables and they move slower or not at all.
I'm NOT saying have the septic system ABOVE the house or up hill. If the house is on a hill and the septic system is below the house but still higher up on a hill then it will work best as no competing rain water and gravity assists to move things down. I thought this (paragraph) was obvious but perhaps not.

We've lived in our house for 40 years and we've had the septic tank emptied about 4 times. It was constructed at the same time as our house in the 1930s, there's a big chamber which drains into a couple of other tanks in succession and finally into a ditch. It never smells. It's excellent.
I am very careful about what chemicals I put down the drain, however. I always check that loo cleaner states it's safe for septic tanks, try not to use too much bio washing powder or bleach... My kids had terry nappies as babies - the nappy sanitiser got thrown on our drive, not down the drain - it killed the moss beautifully 😁.
However the gradual infill of houses in the very centre of our village eventually caused a lot of problems with the septic tanks because the houses are far too close together for proper drainage. There was smell, waterlogged ground... They were connected to mains drains about 20 years ago.
So if the house you are considering has a old system it'll probably be fine if there are no very close neighbours. The group of houses on the edge of our village where we live all have septic tanks but gardens of at least an acre.

We have a septic tank which doesn’t need emptying very often at all . Some of our neighbours have real issues though and need them emptying several times a year . I presume they are avoiding the cost of a replacement .Our previous house was a shared tank emptied yearly .

Edited to say that ours is very like SoBplus describes .

This is an "ideal" septic set-up:
https://cole-pumper.imgix.net/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pumper.com%2Fuploads%2Fimages%2Fslope-install-3.png?fit=clip&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=80&w=1024&s=f9c905d9bda675f20d62edce1eb6c7c8

We’ve had a septic tank for decades too. We only get it emptied every three or four years or so, and haven’t had any problems. We are very good at making sure nothing goes down that shouldn’t. We’ve had huge problems with neighbours that have a septic tank that drains onto one of our fields. As they’ve upgraded their house and added on more bathroooms it floods the field as the soak away can’t cope. Even replacing it for a new system hasn’t helped. It’s killed trees and made our field unusable.

I used to live in a house with a septic tank and it never gave us any trouble. We had it emptied regularly and were careful not to anything other than tissue paper and human waste down the loo. Also were careful with cleaning products.

These days I'd be far more worried about oil central heating as it was always expensive and I can only imagine the eye watering price it must be now.

Thanks so much everyone, I've noted all the questions I need to ask too. I really appreciate it.

We've had septic tanks and treatment plants they are only as good as the soakaways fact of life when not on mains but look at the money you'll save by not paying for sewerage. Speak to the neighbours they'll know if it's ever been dodgy

Last house had a very old tank, emptied every 2 years by SEPA on a contract, never had any issues with it, but used eco-products as the run-off from it was straight into a river nearby. Theres more building regs and legislation now (Scotland - I assume same in England), which only old tanks avoid (I think pre-1980?).

Solicitor can ask for signed representations detailing past issues with tank that vendors are aware of during conveyancing, butbask on veiwing, too.

We have a treatment plant rather than a septic tank and it's fine. It gets emptied 2x per year and serviced annually.

To the poster who is spending £1000 per month on heating oil, that's insane! We have a large house and spend less than that per year. Heating oil is cheaper in the summer and the lead times for delivery are very short. In winter, the price goes up and delivery times are longer. We tend to use Boiler Juice now. DH checks the level on the tank monthly and when it gets to a certain level, I get quotes.