A Smelly Tale

Warning. This post contains details of an unpleasant sort.

One of the joys, if you can call it that, of living on a rural block, is owning your own septic tank. Or in our case a waste treatment plant. All that messy stuff that gets flushed own the drain and off to where you don’t want to think about when in town, end up somewhere near to your front or rear door. Buried for sure, and unobtrusive, but still there. If nothing goes wrong then you needn’t think about it except once or twice a year, when you call someone in to service.

With a new one, like ours, you don’t think you’re going to have too many problems.

Well think again. Just four months in and it started to smell. Imagine if you will the worst smell from the worst public lavatory. Now imagine that smell sitting outside your door. Windy days are a blessing as it blows the odor away. We have been “blessed” with a lot of lovely still fine days. Hot still fine days

So we rang the install people with whom we have a service contract some four weeks ago when the smell started. Someone will be with you soon they said. Don’t worry they said.

Well finally after more calls and emails the nice man turned up to check the tank out this week. We were worried we had put some wrong chemicals down the drain, which had ruined the, ahem, culture of the tank.

No he says, opening it up and looking in. It all looks nice and healthy in there. It’s just the crust isn’t thick enough yet. Apparently it is meant to form a thick crust which stops the gases escaping. Our timer on the pump in the system needed tweaking as it was pumping to much and not letting the crust form properly. Who knew?

So now the smell is fading, and hopefully our septic tank will get suitably crusty. Its not a visual image I really want to dwell on.

O and more good news, we have rain… Happy water tank and plants…

Dem Smells

Our water was smelling a little funny on the weekend, so off to the Internet I went. Apparently water tanks can develop bacteria, and the best think is to put a chlorine based bleach like Janola. Out with a bottle I went, and using the guide I found, and estimating the amount of water in the tank we had, I put what I thought was the right amount in.

Problem solved… Almost

I may have got my rough calculation solved, as now our water tastes and smells vaguely of chlorine.  After washing we all smell like we have been to the swimming pools

Worst of all the coffee tastes not very nice! Quite funny, even if the E.I.C. is having caffeine withdrawals…

We are looking forward to the rain forecast later in the week. Not only for topping the tank up, and watering the trees, but the tank top off should dilute the Janola a bit more and hopefully reduce the smell and taste

Not so funny is the waste treatment plant has become a bit wiffy. We are waiting for a technician to arrive to add some good bacteria and fix the problem. O the joys of owning your own water and septic tanks

Waste Not Want Not

We have received our wastewater system report. Now we know all we need to know about valves, tanks and treatment plants. It is interesting to see that even though we are looking at a treatment plant, we still need a septic tank. Now we just need quotes to see how it will cost to install.

The report is based on our preferred option of installing a composting toilet. I know very hippy green of us. In deference to our various relatives however we are not looking at a dry system. Actually having to give guests a lesson on using the facilities doesn’t appeal to us either. So we are looking at system that acts like a normal toilet.

Cool