A home buyer's drainage nightmare?

Before you commit to buying a home, as you are aware, there are important checks that you need to carry out to identify the condition of the home. 

More home buyers are now recognising the importance of a home buyer's drain survey carried out by an experienced person (in all forms of sewage disposal). Experience in private systems can help identify and resolve problems before they escalate into bigger problems.

Improperly treated wastewater or sewage mixed with surface water/rainwater has the potential to pollute the environment and flood your property with sewage!
House Purchase Survey

It is prudent to have a CCTV drainage survey carried out before buying a house in the country with a private system such as: a treatment plant, a septic tank or pumping station and especially a cesspit! And most importantly – if the house owners don't know which system they do have. In many cases the term ‘cesspit’ or ‘cesspool’ is used as an umbrella term regardless of whether the property has a septic tank or cesspit. 

As a professional drainage company, we at ASL Limited know the drainage checks that you need to carry out to identify the condition of the drains aswell as what kind of private sewage system you have.

When we recently carried out these checks on one particular house, a cesspit was found and recognised, hidden at the bottom of the garden, unknown to the house owners, as they didn’t think it ever needed emptying! 

This discovery enabled the new buyers to decide if they felt this system was suitable for their family of five. It may well have been ‘working’ for the lady and her husband but as soon as the usage is more than doubled then that could cause it’s own problems. 

What is a first-time buyers nightmare?

There are quite a few examples that will give you nightmares.

1. Firstly, a 3,000 gallon cesspit with a brick taken out of the wall of the tank to make the time between emptying last six or ten months rather than every 13 weeks! 
   
   For a start this is illegal. The reality is that sewage would be escaping the cesspit into the environment and polluting our watercourses.
   
   It's quite legal to sell you a 4,000 gallon cesspit, as long as they don't call it a septic tank.
   
   It's understandable the present homeowner often says "my wife and I have lived here for the last 20 years with no problems." But Maintaining a cesspit without a hole in the bottom of the tank is quite costly with a family of five or more! 
2. It's very disruptive to have two large tanker's (each 2,000 gallon capacity) coming, what seems too often; 
3. A common practice is for one sewage tanker to remove 2,000 gallons (10,000 L) every four weeks, rather than let it build up to the full capacity which would need two tankers or two visits. The trouble with this is if it’s not emptied completely – including the solids at the bottom – then it will never give you the full potential capacity anyway. 
4. Changing from a cesspit to a treatment plant or septic tank can be pretty costly and disruptive. If you don’t have this information before you buy the house it’s you that has to foot the bill. The homeowner – as the operator – is responsible for the upkeep and binding rules relating to the private sewage system so once the purchase has gone through there will be no possibility of negotiating refunds then. 
5. The nightmare continues if the ground in which you want to put the upgraded treatment plant isn’t suitable for drainage. If the ground is made up of solid clay you would need to get underneath it in order to lay the drainage field. No one knows how deep the clay is, 10 or 20 m deep without Costly test holes. 
   
   To drill a borehole looking for porous ground at 20 or 30 metres deep, is extremely costly. If there is no river or stream nearby to discharge to then a drainage field is important.
   
   If there is space, and the garden is quite wild at the bottom, it may be possible to create a mound to contain the drainage field. 

It may be helpful to give you a case in point.

We were asked to do a house purchase survey in an area called Cranley in Surrey.

As per my House Purchase survey, here is my brief report;

• The tank is a cesspit of around 3,000 to 4,000 gallons (mainly water). 
• The Customers are pensioners who have not had the tank emptied; so sewage is quite thick in the chamber. 
• A small tanker is strongly recommended to remove the wastwater and sewage.
• The tanker Driver is concerned – The property has a long narrow shared drive with overgrown bushes on either side so there would be quite a lot of scratches along the cab. 

"You can’t turn round at the bottom. It's likely they have trouble getting a sewage tanker to empty the tank."

Job carried out.

We filled our 2,000 gallon tanker. Informed the customer that there was possibly another full load required to empty the tank. 

We notified the owner that there is a strong possibility a small amount of surface water/roof water is getting into the tank.  

Because the tank was over full, the water in the actual drains along with sewage water was backing up towards and around the building. The sewage from the toilets is settling in the pipes and cannot get to the tank as the tank was full.

The drain will obviously need a good clean with a jetting machine and a CCTV survey to finish off the job.

There is a possibility water is escaping from joints in the pipe; this will eventually cause an undermining of the pipe's around the house down to the tank.

The outcome

“Can I move my family of five into the property straight away?”

"The tank, in my opinion, it's not suitable for a family of five, it will fill up within 8 to 12 weeks. If there is heavy rain fall will fill it up straight away."

"The elderly couple living there at the moment are very careful when using water."

"I think this is a nightmare for someone buying this house!"

If you are buying a house and think it might have a private sewage system have a CCTV drainage survey carried out to establish:

• Whish system it is.
• How old it is.
• How often the current owner has it emptied.
• Whether it meets the binding rules.
• What it could cost you to put right anything that is wrong with the system.

Call our friendly office today for some 'solid' advice! 0800 181 684.