Country Living

[poliphilo]

Chap came and emptied the septic tank. It hadn't been done for over a year and the sewage was almost up to the brim. He showed me. Aargh! Fancy still having a septic tank in England in the 21st century! But that's country living for you.

There's a constant roaring all through day. It's coming from the far side of the Maidstone Road where they're taking apart a garden centre in order to create a lorry park. It seems a really bad place to put a lorry park- what with the Maidstone road being narrow and twisty- but I suppose the people who grant licenses for these sorts of things must have been persuaded otherwise. 

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Ah! You had a visit from the dunnikin diver! :o)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

What a job, eh!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

One up on gong scouring I suppose!

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. I'm never going to look at a Dunkin Donuts sign quite the same way ever again..

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

ROFL :o)

It is too close for comfort, isn't it?

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

Everyday for the past week we've had some sort of giant video enabled robotic sucking machine going from manhole to manhole doing something to the storm drains. It's deafening.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This was just a sort of lorry, with hose attached.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

We had a septic tank when we lived on our house on Lake Ontario. We had 3 wells, too. We actually loved it. We loved the idea of drinking water from the earth and then returning it to the earth when we were done. We put a lot of thought and energy into properly maintaining our septic tank, though. We only used bio-degradable soaps, never any bleach, and once a month we flushed living yeast down the toilet. The result was, we lived there 7 years and never had to pump it out once. When we finally did (we had to, as one of the conditions of sale), it was only 3 quarters full. We were quite proud of that.

I miss my house on the lake so much....

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've never had a septic tank before. I don't understand how this one works. Perhaps I should learn; I'm sure I could find the information on line.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

It's quite interesting. My Partner knows more about it than I do (she is the one that did all of the research), but the idea is, if you have a colony of little living microbes in there, they actually consume the organic matter and then what they poop out is healthy for the environment. The tank may look water-tight, but it is actually semi-permeable. The waste product of the microbes soak through the bottom of the tank into what is called a "leach field" where it is further filtered before the liquids pass back into the water table.

There is an expensive product that one can buy that contains all of the microbes, but it turns out that yeast works just as well. But you must be careful about the chemicals that you pour into your septic. "Anti-septics" are a no-no, as are bleach and Lysol. It will kill your micro flora and fauna, and you don't want that.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I think I would be unhappy about the lorry park.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We won't be able to see it from the house. I don't think they're putting it in a very sensible place- but that's their problem, not mine.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I'd be more concerned about the noise than the view...