Septic tank compliance

Davesnave

I would be rather sceptical (septical!) of any report that confused a cess pit with a septic tank, or which made a claim that it needed emptying. How would they know? The thing will be full and I doubt if it would be possible to see reliably how much sludge is present with a camera. A stick is more informative, but even so, the time between the last emptying is all I can ever go on. We just do it every 2 years, but never all the way down, because it's big and the residual bacteria are essential to the workings.

I agree with seeing the records of emptying, which is usually all the 'maintenance' needed. People who neglect it may well  have accidents, where the heavy stuff goes down the outflow. Sometimes that can be cleared to an extent by 'hot rodding' , but it's never the same again.

If you know where the drainage field is, it's a good time of year to walk it. The saturated ground will soon show up any problems through black water visible at the surface, or in depressions.

boots_babe

Having just bought a house with a septic tank ourselves, it's something we've had to read up on rather a lot. The General Binding Rules relating to drainage fields are here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/general-binding-rules-small-sewage-discharge-to-the-ground

Certainly much less likely to have any issues, than if you were draining into a watercourse. I think that given the confusion re septic tank/cesspit (very different!) and also drainage field (allowed) vs soakaway (not allowed under the new regs), if it was me I'd want to commission my own independent survey from a specialist in this area. 

If you go ahead and purchase then later find that the setup isn't what you thought, and isn't compliant, then you could face some VERY big costs to resolve. For our own situation, our septic tank is non compliant as survey showed it discharges to a watercourse, initially wanted to switch to a drainage field but costs were coming in at ~ £40k (because of some complex technical work needed due to the site). Ended up having to go for small sewage treatment plant which is still going to cost around £12k, but thankfully the vendor agreed to make an allowance on our purchase to get this done. In fact they are coming tomorrow for a final site survey and schedule in the work.

Good luck.