How much is your annual service for your domestic sewage plant in the garden?

[planAplanB]

Our usual company is quoting £205 in total. What is yours please?

I think we paid £230 last time. I wouldn't call it a service though - it was just pumped out.

Thanks. They don't pump it out. They literally just take various readings. Feels like such a rip off.

Annual? I think we used to do ours once every 5 years or so (can't remember the cost)

Yes, that sounds like a rip off.

Other than emptying it, I don't think they need much doing to them.

I think it's around £200 for our Klargester. Obviously no emptying needed!

They take readings.

I think posters are getting confused between a cess pit and which just needs emptying and a sewage treatment plant which do need emptying and also need a service. Ours costs about £300 annually.

The price also means that if something goes wrong with it, the company won't charge us a call out fee which is usually £300. Again, feels like a rip off.

My fear is that if we opt out this year, this will be the year it breaks and we'd have to fork out a fortune to get an engineer out.

They are supposed to service it.

Yep it's not a cess pit. It's a sewage treatment plant under the ground in the garden which contains bacteria to break down the waste and then drains grey water into the field out the back.

We’re just in the process of selling our house and have learnt a lot about the law and sewage treatment plants. The law changed in 2023 and if your plant leaks out untreated sewage you are breaking the law and could be fined. The law also says you must service it regularly and keep receipts etc so you can prove it’s been done.

Also cesspits are by law being replaced, if you buy a property with a cesspit you have to by law, now replace it with a sewage treatment plant within 12 months. They are really tightening up on this.

A sewage treatment plant doesn't need emptying anywhere near as often as a septic tank as far as I'm aware - we've never had ours emptied but it's serviced regularly