It Started with an Alarm – Lower Bourne, Farnham

It was a quiet Tuesday morning in Lower Bourne when one of our long-term customers phoned with a simple message:

“The treatment-plant alarm’s going off — but everything looks fine.”

That single beep was the start of a story that explains why preventative care matters more than anything else in the drainage world.

 

The First Visit

Within an hour, our tanker and jetting van were onsite.

The control panel showed a high-level warning — a sign that water wasn’t leaving the system as it should.

At first glance, the inspection chamber looked clear. No standing water, no odour, nothing obvious.

But years of experience told us: when an alarm sounds, something’s shifting beneath the surface.

So we began our standard procedure — high-pressure jet back from the outlet, followed by a camera survey through the run toward the soakaway.

The Hidden Problem

About 12 metres down the line, the camera caught it: a dark, glassy layer of fat coating the pipe. Grease had built up slowly from the kitchen sink — each wash-up sending a thin film of fat that had solidified over months.

That film narrowed the pipe until flow slowed and the treatment plant triggered a high-water alarm.

Nothing catastrophic yet — but left another week, it could have backed sewage through the garden and into surface-water drains.

 

Preventative Action in Practice

Because this client already had an ASL maintenance plan, we acted fast — no new quotes, no delays. Our tanker emptied the chamber while the jetter cleared and re-profiled the pipework. Within two hours the alarm was off, flow was restored, and the ground was protected from pollution.

The next step was simple but crucial: a re-education visit. We showed the householders what had happened on camera and how to avoid a repeat — wiping plates before washing up, installing a grease trap, and keeping rainwater separate from foul waste.

The Lesson from Lower Bourne

This wasn’t a failure of equipment. It was a failure of routine.

Treatment plants and soakaways depend on lightly aerated soil to absorb and filter treated water. Once fat enters that system, it blocks the micro-pores in the soil, stopping the secondary treatment process altogether.

You can’t “un-block” soil. When that happens, the only solution is a new soakaway or pumping station — costly and disruptive.

This incident proves that listening to alarms and acting immediately is a form of preventative maintenance in itself.

Most alarms aren’t false — they’re first warnings of a system saving itself.

 

From Guildford to Farnham – A Linked Story

If you’ve read our previous articles, you’ll see the pattern:

Preventative Maintenance vs Reactive Maintenance explains the principle, and Promoting Preventative Measures shows it in action across Guildford and Worplesdon.

This Lower Bourne case is the result when those lessons aren’t followed soon enough.

 

The Aftermath – and the Good News

Three months after the repair, our follow-up inspection showed a fully functioning system. The client now keeps a maintenance log, and their plant has had no further issues.

That’s what we call a complete turnaround — from alarm to awareness to action.

Your Own Preventative Plan

If you hear an alarm from your treatment plant or notice slow draining around the property, don’t ignore it.

ASL offers free estimates for CCTV surveys, tank emptying and preventative maintenance across Farnham, Guildford and surrounding villages.

Call 0800 0488 680 to book a survey today.