A morass of muck and money down the drain
The Book of Genesis tells us nothing of the sanitary arrangements provided in the Garden of Eden, but in that perfect,
prelapsarian Paradise Adam and Eve could have got by quite comfortably with a septic tank. In a fallen world, though, things go wrong, and few things go wrong more foully. If your search for a heavenly home takes you far from the cloaca maxima, beware. A dream cottage with duff drains is a nightmare. Not even the prettiest rural prospect brings any pleasure when you have to look at it over a garden that is awash with what you thought you'd flushed away.
We've lived in two houses built beyond mains drainage, and suffered septic-tank problems in both. In the first, it was an idiot surveyor that landed us in it — 'it' being a decoction of indescribable nastiness that turned the vegetable patch into a turd-bobbing paddy field. 'The drains were not tested but are believed to be in good working order,' said his report. The only way he can have come to such a conclusion was by asking and believing the previous owner. We had met her a little old lady who we did not feel would have lied. We later discovered, though, that she worked a couple of hours each morning in the village shop, where she must have moved her octogenarian bowels when occasion demanded. She certainly can't have done so daily in the house. We, with three babies in nappies — real nappies, that is, the ones you have to wash — stood no chance.
We realised things weren't right on day one, when the washing-up water ran away with reluctance and the shower tray turned into a footbath. When we tried flushing the downstairs loo, it glooped and gurgled in protest, and the clean water at the bottom of it disappeared altogether, before returning in contaminated abundance to fill the pan to the brim. We assumed the tank was full and had it emptied, but two days later it all happened again. Why? Because the cottage was on a marsh and near a river, and the tank's outlet pipes drew more water in than they drained out. When we realised this, we sued the surveyor and put the devalued house on the market. Meanwhile, we survived by adopting a drain-saving regime involving running the washing-machine and bath-water outlets into the hedge, popping out to the pub for a poo, and (in my case, anyway) pissing en plein air in the back garden.
Three houses later, we are once again connected to a septic tank. This one works beautifully most of the time, but there is no way of predicting when it will play up. Again, it's the water table that causes it. We know we're in trouble when we call out the drain man and he finds little that is solid to pump away. When we lift the lid after he has gone, we see water rushing in from the out pipe. But when the water table is low, we don't give the septic tank a thought. We had a dry spring and summer not so long ago, and forgot all about it for the best part of a year. Unfortunately, our malodorous reminder occurred on Christmas day in the morning, with a house full of guests and several more expected for dinner. I called the council's emergency-services hotline, but they couldn't get a man out until the next day. Meanwhile, there was nothing for it but to get out the rods and push what I could back to the tank. Yuk.
When the drain man came the next morning, I almost embraced him — which I would probably have regretted, for the smell that hung about him suggested this was not the first call of his day. After a great deal of pumping and prodding, he stood and scratched his head — something I would not have done had my hands been in the state of his. look at that!' he exclaimed. It would have been churlish to refuse. A morass of muck a yard deep lurked sullenly in one corner of the tank. 'It's not just shit, you know; it's all mixed up with soap and fat and stuff. It's set solid like concrete.' I did not argue. 'I'll have to empty the first load and come back and try again.' When he returned, he borrowed my spade, my fork, my bucket and my garden hose, and leapt into the tank and set to work. I went off to make him a cup of tea. I did not pour one for myself.
Some while later, the tank was empty, and clods of unspeakable nastiness lay strewn under the hedgerow across the lane, where the drain man had thrown them because he couldn't break them into pieces small enough for his suction pipe to pick up. His efforts at hosing down the front path had left it coated in a fine film of filth. Worse, when we flushed the downstairs loo, we realised that the pipe between the house and the tank was still blocked. Up rolled the sleeves, out came the rods. Connecting each one to the next, I fed them into the pipe and thrust away to no effect. The set was too short. There was one more length left, but the connection on it was broken at one end. which is why I hadn't used it in the first place. My wife pointed out that if I pulled out the whole set and put it in backwards. I'd be able to connect the last piece the other way round. Out they all came, easily but not cleanly. Wearing rubber gloves and using plastic bags to cover my hands and forearms, I screwed in the last piece and had one more go, lying on the ground and putting my head and shoulders into the chamber so that I could push the length of my arm down the pipe. It worked. Phew. No, phew!
I left all the equipment on the front lawn, where it could stay until rain rendered it once more approachable, and went indoors to wash soda and disinfectant down every plughole in the house before climbing into a deep, hot bath. A couple of hours later, I washed the experience from my mind, too, as I walked the dog across hare-chased fields while the sun settled gently into the margin of a fine Norfolk skyscape. Living in the country does have some compensations, I thought, as 1 kicked off my boots — until I went into the sitting-room and noticed that my dog had brought in with her a brick-sized piece of near-calcified sewage and was crunching it into little pieces on the carpet.
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