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

[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.