Reed bed sewage treatment

aritchie71 · Reed bed sewage treatment

Hi folks, i was just wondering if anyone has any experience of reed beds for their sewage disposal? As you know we are about to move into a couple of static caravans and we have just got prices for septic tanks and soakaway etc and to be honest it is going to cost a fortune!
So, i was wondering if there is anything else that we can do to get rid of the waste, and if there is, what is it and how much will it cost and can we do it ourselves>?!?!

Andy.

Smooth Hound

i used to use a bucket with a lid and put it on the compost :oops:

i have looked into reed bed sewage treatment, but how is the lay of your land, is there a suitable place for it

Smooth Hound

theres some good diagrams at the bottom of this

http://www.johnstonsmith.co.uk/fact17.html

Sassinak

Composting toilets seem to work quite well. But that wouldn't solve the problem of waste water.
Looking at those diagrams on that link they appar to be treating the outflow from a septic tank rather than raw suage.
Are you looking for a solution for the caravans or for the eventual house?

aritchie71

it is for the caravans, but it is starting to look like we will just have to find the money and get the septic tank and a soakaway.

Sassinak

We installed the septic tank for the house and then put the caravan in a stupid, inconvenient place so that we could plumb that into the septic tank. There is a T junction ready to connect the house to and then the caravan feed can just be capped.
It just means that we can't complete the driveway because there is a caravan in the way lol

aritchie71

the problem with our vans is that they are going across the road in one of our parks so we cant use the same one for the house, it needs to be a whole new system that we install just for them, and it is not cheap, we need to get a percolation test done and that is £450 alone!! All that money just to chuck some water in a hole and time it to see how long it takes to go away!
I think that we are just going to have to go ahead and do it the conventional way, unless any other neepsters out there have done anything different?

Andy.

Sassinak

Our percolation tests were a farce.
They cost an absolute fortune. The septic tank had already been in and performing well for 3 years l!
Dug holes and chap didn't turn up for 2 weeks - horrid weather and they filled with water. Not a good start.
Had a man with a jcb sat all day digging holes to order. First holes were no good - water went away too slowly.
Second set were no good - water went away too quickly grrr
He eventually found a site he liked and decided that the outflow had to be piped about 50 metres and have herringbone pipe covering about 300 metres. We said thankyou very much and have left it as it was lol

Smooth Hound

if its temporary , then just build a breeze block one, its the cheapest way, i think a standard one for a big house, or permanent house should i say, is normally, 2 m wide, by about 5/6 metres long, with a wall 1 third of the way from the outlet end, built with gaps, so if you made something say 4 ft wide , by four ft deep and 10/12 ft long, then that would be adequate as a temperry solution, youll need to dig a small soakaway as well, just dig a big hole, chuck all you rocks and stones in it, cover it with plastic, and cover it with a ft of soil.

Smooth Hound

thats after youve put a piece of land drain in it from the outlet, also its an idea to dig your soakaway first, put the hose in it for a day, then leave it for a week and see what happens,

IainC

Was involved with helping setup a reed bed system a long time ago when I still did civil engineering. IIRC the costs involved are not any better (ie cheaper) than putting in a normal septic tank.

If it's something additional to your normal house one I take it there is no possible way to connect into it (without huge cost as well). No way of putting one small van/shed on the house run and setting up a small bathroom in it instead of on each large caravan?

Smooth Hound

8) idea,

aritchie71

ian, that seems to be about right, the costs involved in a reed bed system seem to be pretty much on par with a standard septic tank, if not more expensive!
The idea of a seperate shed/van for a bathroom would work if everything was together, the house is on one side of the road and the vans are on the other, fine in the summer but in the middle of the night in winter.......!
Good idea though!

IainC

Sassinak

Trouble is that you can't use chemical toilet "chemicals" in it if you are going to empty into a septic tank. It kills the bacteria.

Ina

Smooth Hound

thats what we did,

as long as you empty it regularly and rinse it out as well

JamesB

whilst staying in the caravan, we used the green cone for solid waste, seemed to work ok for the time we needed it. We too tut the caravan in a place that meant we couldn't do the drains first.
Normally you would use a septic and a reed bed or a mound system. we opted for a mound system since cheaper than reed bed, both are expensive due to the amount of gravel and sand you need (we used about 250 tonnes of the stuff!).
However mound systems dont work well in winter due to saturation from rain (we tried telling the council that but they insisted on a mound sytem!). We've planted willows below the mound to catch any runoff that didn't have time to get treated in the mound.

James

StuP

If you have ready access to sawdust then a composting toilet could be fairly straightforward. See the Humanure Handbook for details. The liquids would be important to aid activation of the composting. I'm only allowed to pee on the compost heap! :oops:

lachlanandmarcus

We did the same as Sassinak, built the drains and septic tank first, big breeze block one (village thought we were going to open a hotel cos it was big

)

Connected that up to the caravan (which I am still living in at present). Land wasnt ideal topography for reed beds so put that to one side for now, just have (very long!) soakaway. But would relook at it later on for sure.

We had to cross (our own) track with the pipework but not a public road as we're not on one. so I guess it was easier in that way.

Its very nice to have a flushing looby loo!