Septic & wastewater systems

Signs your on-site system is in trouble

Septic problems build slowly and then become urgent. These are the early ones.

• Wet, boggy or unusually green ground over the disposal area. Effluent is not being absorbed and is surfacing. The most common sign that a system is failing.
• Smells around the tank or the disposal area. A properly working system should not announce itself.
• Every drain in the house running slowly at once. If the tank or the disposal area cannot take any more, the whole house backs up behind it.
• Gurgling from fixtures, particularly the ones closest to the tank.
• Wastewater surfacing anywhere on the property. A health issue. Keep children and pets away from it and get it dealt with.
• An alarm going off on a treatment system. Aerated systems have alarms for a reason. Do not just silence it.
• You cannot remember the last pump-out. Sludge accumulates and eventually carries over into the disposal field, which is the expensive part to damage.
• You have just bought the property and know nothing about the system. Worth an inspection before something surprises you.
• Household size has grown. Systems are sized for a number of people, and adding a granny flat or two more residents can push an adequate system past its capacity.

The disposal area is the expensive part of any on-site system. Most of the point of maintenance is protecting it, because replacing a failed absorption or irrigation field is a much bigger job than a pump-out.

What septic and wastewater work costs

This ranges from a straightforward blockage to a system replacement that needs council approval. Where your job sits depends on:

• Whether the problem is in the plumbing or in the disposal area. The single biggest difference. Pipework and pumps are ordinary plumbing. A failed field is a much larger project.
• Whether a pump-out is needed. Arranged with a licensed liquid waste contractor, since that material has to be transported and disposed of lawfully.
• Access on the block. Acreage means distance, gates, slopes, and sometimes no vehicle access to where the work is.
• Type of system. Aerated treatment systems have pumps, blowers, controls and alarms, so there is more to go wrong and more to service than on a plain septic tank.
• Whether council approval is involved. Installing or altering an on-site wastewater system requires council approval, and that process takes time and has to be factored in.
• Site and soil conditions. How well the ground absorbs, how much land is available, and the setbacks required from boundaries, waterways and bores all affect what is even possible.

We will be straight with you about which category your problem is in early, because there is no point spending money on the plumbing if the disposal field is the actual issue.

On-site wastewater on unsewered acreage

If your property is not connected to the sewer, your household wastewater is being treated in your own backyard. That works well for decades when the system is looked after, and it fails expensively when it is not.

The two arrangements you are likely to have

A traditional septic tank holds wastewater while solids settle and bacteria break down what they can, then discharges the liquid to absorption trenches where it soaks into the soil. Simple, few moving parts, and heavily dependent on the soil in the disposal area continuing to absorb.

An aerated wastewater treatment system does more work up front. It aerates the effluent so it is treated to a higher standard, then disperses the treated water through subsurface irrigation, often over the garden. It handles more, it uses the water, and it has pumps, blowers, controls and an alarm. More capability, more to service.

Protect the disposal area above all else

Almost all septic maintenance is really about one thing: keeping solids and grease out of the disposal field. Once trenches or irrigation lines are blocked, the ground has stopped doing its job and the fix is not a pump-out, it is a new disposal area, with council approval, earthworks and a significant bill. Regular servicing costs a fraction of that. This is the least glamorous advice on our website and it is the advice that saves people the most money.

Where these properties are

In The Hills, the acreage suburbs on the rural edge, including Dural, Kenthurst, Annangrove and out towards Glenorie, have large blocks that were never connected to the sewer and where on-site systems are the norm. The Hills Shire Council has around 3,500 of them on its register. These are frequently the same properties that rely on tank water, so the whole water cycle on the block is the owner's responsibility rather than a utility's.

Council, not Sydney Water

This is the part that surprises people who have moved from a sewered suburb. There is no water authority looking after this for you. On-site sewage management is regulated by your local council under the Local Government Act, and in The Hills that means two separate approvals: one to install or alter a system, and an ongoing approval to operate the system you have. Council notes that a large number of properties on its register have never applied for approval to operate at all, which is worth knowing if you have recently bought an acreage block. Tracking down the approval paperwork and service history is a genuinely useful hour of your time.

What we do and what we do not

We do the plumbing: the line from the house, blockages, tank inlet and outlet pipework, pumps, irrigation lines, and diagnosing whether your problem is the plumbing, the tank or the field. Pump-outs are done by licensed liquid waste contractors, and we will arrange one where that is what you need. Designing and approving a new disposal area is a process involving your council and, depending on the site, a wastewater consultant. We will tell you honestly when your job has moved into that territory.

Call Luke on 0423 213 079 or Zach on 0402 273 744, or send the form for an answer within 12 hours.