Tuesday 27 January 2009

Waste Managment

What is is about lavatories and loo type stuff? Years ago we used to sail a bit (charter a boat in the Greek islands and potter about). We always had stories of blocking the heads (loos on boats for those who wonder what I am on about); or trying to find the cafe in harbour with the best facilities; or what to do when your boat doesn't have a holding tank, you are moored in a nice bay, you have to go but there are people swimming near your boat; I won't go into details. Well here we are on 'dry' land and we have been having more fun with loos today.

We came here in April last year and I swear that when we asked (I can't remember now if it was the agent or the landlord) if we were on the mains for drainage and water, we were told mains (in retrospect we should have realised that this was very unlikely for the drainage but we were still a bit townie!) Anyway, we always have thought that there was a bit of the garden (on the edge by a hedge and ditch) that was a bit smelly and even more boggy than the rest of the garden, but as it has been so wet this year we just thought that that was the way it was.

So yesterday I noticed that when you flushed the outside loo a manhole cover round the side of the house moved... Mark got the cover off and as you can guess it was very very full and very very nasty. He got a set of rods from our friends (our rods actually but we left them there) and proceeded to try to clear the blockage (thinking all the time that we are on the mains don't forget), as he did this I went to look at the boggy bit of the garden and noticed that the lawn between the manhole and the boggy bit was moving, up and down as he pulled the rods in and out. We stopped using the rods and called the landlord. Of course it transpired that we have a cess pit with a soak away and the lawn moving up and down was the cover moving as the waste was pushed up against it, As a girl I am a bit embarrassed about the whole thing (if you get my drift).

Our very lovely landlord and poor old Mark have had a wonderful day trying to sort this, the long and the short of it being that we now have a big hole in the garden and are waiting for the landlord to come back with a mini digger and pipe so that they can try to clean the cess pit and put in new piping. It could take a few days to get sorted and meanwhile we will to try to keep the chickens out of that bit of the garden which will be a challenge as it is their favorite bit, hopefully the smell will keep Mr Fox at bay....

Oh the joys of country living.

2 comments:

Bovey Belle said...

Oh the joys of country living. Better you found out about the cess pit NOW rather than when it starts backing up in the loo . . . We don't even have mains water here (we have our own spring) but before we transferred our allegience to the spring, we had to share a water supply with the farm next door. He always had idiots working for him and sometimes they would spread the slurry right UP to (even over) the bore hole . . . Needless to say you can imagine what came out of our taps . . . Not to mention what happened when all his cows had a drink and left us with none . . .

Lotti said...

Oh thanks BB, your comment made me smile and made me feel better, at least (well at the mo) we don't have water problems. We do have a spring and a well but both are not in use for the house (shame actually would save us a fortune on water bills).