Drain to septic tank

It's "septic"...not sceptic

Hahaha, my brains melting from days of looking at houses   they're all starting to look the same , yeah septic tank 😅

"Sceptic tank" is not the right word, but scepticism may be appropriate when discussing village plumbing! I'm sceptical that most village houses even have a proper septic tank!

Unless they've already been renovated, most will just have a cesspit which is not the same thing. As far as I know, my place has a brick-lined hole in the ground that the toilet and shower pipes drain into.

Janemulberry hit the nail on the head there.

Don't even think about hooking it up mate. Like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole that is. Just not going to work out mate. If the place hasn't got a privvy already, your old cesspit is about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Some new laws meant to be about for tanks now but I know locals dont bother.

@georgewheelwright

If you can do the plumbing for a new bathroom, you can probably do the outlet to the septic tank! My plumber just dug a short trench, and made a hole to access the tank (for my new bathroom that was too low to connect to the existing sewer pipe). It didn't seem very complicated at all. I suppose the issue might be whether the existing septic is any good, but it seems pretty harmless to try it. If it's no good, re-route the sewer pipe to your shiny new tank.

However, I think it's good to buy a bit of infrastructure with one's new Bulgarian house. :-) I'd suggest paying a few euros more to get a house with an old kitchen and an old WC/bathroom that you can upgrade, rather than one with a dunny in the garden. This should have the outlet pipes connected to (hopefully) a decent septic.

These old tanks definitely aren't up to code in the UK, and probably not even in Bulgaria. But they seem to be pretty simple, and work just fine. If it's good enough for all our neighbours... :-)

Yes I support what gwynj has said here about getting a house with better infrastucture.. Bulgarian plumbing is a lot different than UK as pipes have to be heated to molten  plastic with an large cumbersome iron which gets really hot an gives burns to your skin easily you have to screw ferrules onto the iron which match your pipe size and you have to melt both pieces then your joining together at the same time... It takes practice to get it right .. to much and you will block your pipe or fitting with moulten plastic .. not enough and the joint could blow out ... Done it been there..   Also it's a better idea to go see what your buying .. and check out this septic tank . They are pretty simplistic really and can be found on YouTube .. a very important part of your homes infrastucture .. I looked at rural property many years ago and the original term for the bog  is about right.. often a large hole with a movable hut ..  I did not buy rural  lol

What Gwyn said! If there's a separate or attached building with a shower and flush toilet, even if very basic, there should be some sort of waste management set up there. Probably an old cesspit, but if it works, it works. I'm not in a rush to change ours to a modern septic tank, though we'll be best to keep showers short and be careful what we flush. Some old houses have an outside toilet on its own with the deep drop dunny,  just a seat or a squat pad over a hole in the ground.

My main house has both an inside flush toilet (very basic plumbing, but it did work) and a separate old hole-in-ground squat loo in the garden. I also have a very old house in the same village with only the deep drop. I'm hopeful the bathroom in the main house can be renovated without needing to upgrade the cesspit, though I daily expect to get a message that the builder doing the bathroom over winter ran into issues and I need to spend loads more to upgrade the system. The very old house, I'm not going to even try for a flush toilet. It gets a composting toilet and a grey water system for the shower water.

Ideally, get a house with some plumbing in place, even if basic. it's worth keeping the old deep drop too even after you renovate, just in case the water goes off in the village, which can happen, especially for houses on higher ground.

I have a bathroom in the upstairs of my home built at the end of the corridor with a shower in it as well.  The outlet from it travels down through the basement kitchen against the north wall then out and under the earth floor of the adjoining outside room .  Now I was told when we viewed the house that it went into a mains sewage but have no idea if this is true what do you think?

Some bigger villages do have mains sewage, though most smaller ones won't. I think your village is quite large, isn't it, Kath? So it could have mains sewage. The mayor's office should be able to tell you.

@janemulberry thanks to everyone for their help,,Helps me convince the missus that there has to be something that resembles a bathroom inside already !!  This group has been a great help!! 👍 got another topic which I will post regarding emails .

Yes our village is a large one I'll ask the Mayor. But I'd read that the pipes run down into a manhole on a road but mine seems to run down the garden into the garden belonging to a house on another lane and I've walked around and not seen a manhole cover. But I don't put toilet paper down it  just to be sure.

@Kath948381

I'd say it was mains sewage Kath .. domestic human waste does not disappear it's reduced  in septic tanks where the bacteria eats it up and worms etc live on top eating the poo yum yum ..  but over time the thick porridge that builds up on the top will get thicker and deeper and will need an empty.. or it will block both the inlet and outlet waste pipes.... inlet pipe puts the domestic waste in the tank ..    its a horizontal tee shaped pipe and open ended so it puts the fresh stuff under the porridge. The top of the inlet pipe is open ended for rodding and stops it getting airlocked .  The outlet allows the water to flow and takes the water from under the poo porridge into an outlet tank which is connected to a sparge pipe which has many small holes to allow drainage to the land .. a cess pool is just a storage tank in UK an when full it requires empty.  Suspect most BG just run into the ground ..  .. you may have a tank but it probably will just be full of ground water with no poo .. I had a  septic tank in new Romney Kent for 24 years and the house in Philippines has a septic tank ..  they wil l all cause problems from time to time lol but a hose pipe and a set of rods sorts it out

We were told it was mains sewage when we bought but we were ripped off a bit by the agent so I didn't really trust them after that I'd I'd never use them again.  Seems that they operate under a number of names as well

Just checking were on the same page here expats. Cesspits and tanks are two different devils.

Agreed. My understanding is that most village houses will have a cesspit, not a tank.

@mickeyhart

I'm not an expert on the various types of poo tanks, so you might be correct. But I thought a cesspit was a completely sealed (often) concrete cube, which would need frequent emptying.

A fancy modern septic tank (or "digester" as some are called) does maximum treatment and the runoff is pretty much clean water. My dad's septic (in the UK) gave up the ghost a couple of years ago (after about 50 years of use) and UK regs forced a new digester as the replacement. If I recall correctly it was the best part of 15k GBP, so not cheap. And it needs electricity supply to the motor (stirrer, I think) which has burned out a couple of times already.

A rural septic, Bulgarian-style, as installed in our village house, has stone walls, but seems to be open at the bottom to the ground (i.e. using the soil/gravel to filter). It also has another outlet pipe to outside the property (which I think is an overflow when there lots of water going in (e.g. from showers, washing machine, storms).

@gwynj its clicked now – what I call a cesspit is what Bulgarians call a septichna yama so thats the septic tank everyone is on about. Like what Janemullberry saw a brick-lined hole in the ground for the outhouse. If it aint broke, don't fix it. But dont think about plumbing in a new shower down there whatever you do.

Ours has a shower plumbed in, which we didn't use because the hot water system didn't work, but clearly had been well used in the past. It's all being renovated now, but I'll stick with the old cesspit if we can to avoid the expense of a proper septic tank. But we're going to have to stick to quick showers, I think!

My septic is a pretty big hole with some fairly serious stone work for the walls, a concrete cap, and a runoff outlet that goes maybe 50m. I've emptied it once in 5 years (50 leva or so, amazingly cheap). It seems to work very well, and I've had no issues with it at all.

During the pandemic, I got a trench dug a few hundred meters to the nearest manhole/village drain at the back of the property. So, in theory, I now have mains sewerage... but, 2 years later,  I still didn't empty the septic so that I can connect the current outlet pipe to the new sewer pipe!

I've got a second hole which looks very similar (stone walls, concrete cap), but has no runoff. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing this is a "dry well" rather than a septic, for storm runoff and grey water from a sink in the basement.

My 3rd hole is the well. Very traditional construction, quite shallow. I doubt I can revive it, most old wells here are now too shallow, and my neighbours are all getting deeper boreholes done by modern drillers.

@gwynj

Can I ask who emptied your septic tank?

The property I'm coming to look at in February has, what I'm guessing from their description, is a cesspit. They've lived in the house for 14 years and have never had it emptied. Apparently it has water run off to their land, but I'm a bit concerned about the level of solids after all these years.

I'll need to check it when we visit and if necessary, they'll have to have it emptied before we complete the sale.

I have a cesspit in France, which I found years ago when my house was just a holiday home. It is literally just an earth pit, covered with a sheet of metal and not particularly very deep.

During Covid when I couldn't visit, the garden all got very overgrown and since I've moved here 18 months ago, I haven't managed to check it. Tbh I'm a bit scared of what I might find now. 😱 😂

@grumpyoldbird

I very much doubt it's a cesspit .. 14 years is far to long for all that poo just to sit there..  if it has a run off it's probably a septic tank and yes it could operate quite efficiently and last 14 years .. the one I had in my ex marital home wasn't emptied for about the 1st 10 years and there were 6 of us living there .. 4 kids and 2 adults.  then something changed in the water table and I had to get it emptied.  From then on I had to have it emptied once a year .. there must be lots of sewage gulping firms out in Bulgaria because of the rural villages which there are many and often close to each other.. you need to find a English speeking Bulgarian as I'm sure they will know what you need to do..   even if you don't actually need an empty out its information you need to have ready for that sad day

@philip Mckay

Thanks for that. I'll definitely have to check when I'm there, otherwise it's gonna bug me. I'm a bit unsure what passes for a septic tank in Bulgaria. In the UK and France, it's always a plastic processing tank, that costs a small fortune to buy and fit. I've bought a Micro Station for my French house, which cost 6k euros, but its been sitting in my garden for the last year, because I can't afford to have it fitted! 😂

@grumpyoldbird

Is that some sort of rain water recycling unit ?  Or some sort of ready made septic tank .. IV only seen hand made ones .

I could easy make one but to old to dig the hole now lol .. oh I can feel my back aching just thinking about it uugh!

    I haven't managed to check it. Tbh I'm a bit scared of what I might find now. 😱 😂        -@grumpyoldbird

I'm the same with mine! I am pretty sure the cesspit is what's under some sheets of corrugated fibro, but I really don't want to lift them up to see what is there! No apparent run-off, and also located in a corner only a few feet from two walls of the house, one the bathroom wall where I can see a pie coming out and going underground. Slightly uphill, so even if they dug the hole deep, chances are any seepage from it is going to go under the house.

Oh dear! Maybe i should go pay someone several thousand to put in a proper septic tank?!

@janemulberry

Mmmm when I looked at places around kostanets.  The real Estater said that they dig a hole and put a wooden hut thing over the top so maybe it's an old bog.. best not to look eek!

The whole rural thing just tuned me off. Thankfully both my properties are mains drainage  neither us rural. One is in Byala about 300mtr from the sea and new when I bought it .And the other up in Samokov in the Rila mountains just 10km from Borovets ski resort.  Both very  different from each other.. Byala is a holiday place and has that feel to it and Samokov is a large working town with lots of Roma about ..  big potato growing area and wood.  I love both places but deffo not rural

It's not the old Dunny over a hole, that's elsewhere in the garden! No, it's a cesspit I expect made when the old lady got too old to go outside to squat over the hole anymore and someone converted an old pantry into a shower room with a flush toilet. But I'll be surprised if it's more than a brick lined hole in the ground with a single bit of plastic ag pipe carrying shower water and loo flush to it.

Well at least you don't have any immediate problems which is a good thing and let's face it Bulgarians have been using these things probably for hundreds of years and probably a few hundred more to come horses for courses right or needs must!

I certainly used to have fun with my septic tank from time to time .. one of the big problems is the washing powder from washing machine it used to go solid in the pipe an eventually had to get the rods out and hose pipe  rod it through and hose it out.. certainly worth buying a set of rods as they easily solved any blockages ..

@philip Mckay

The Micro Station? No they're very common in France now, because they're clamping down here on cesspits. A micro station is just a smaller version of a septic tank, but it doesn't need a sand filter like a traditional septic tank. As a result they're cheaper to fit and take up less space.

@janemulberry

I've seen a post on here previously which mentioned having a septic tank fitted and it was 2400 euros. That's cheap compared to France, where you're looking at about 10k.

Ouch at 10K! I'm not sure that the 2400 EUR is an average Bg price as I've seen higher quoted. The problem at my place is because of the slope of the land and where the bathroom is located, a proper septic tank would need to be quite a distance from the house, across a driveway and on the block of land next door. That land thankfully  comes with our house, but would still be a challenge to work with.

I suspect it might be necessary to update the cesspit eventually. I'm willing to make the necessary adjustments to live with a more basic system, having grown up with a very poorly functioning septic system and wanting to be more eco-friendly in our waste disposal wherever possible. But townie hubby may not be quite so willing! We'll have a go at trying to use the existing system with a more modern bathroom, and see how things work out.

@janemulberry

I'm trying to understand the slope issue. Obviously, I get that the you-know-what rolls downhill... :-) But the septic is usually pretty close to the house, so you don't need to dig a long trench... and the outlet pipe can point downhill, even if the land goes uphill.

10k-15k is perfectly plausible if you want to comply with modern European standards for your effluent treatment. But if Bulgaria still lets you get away with a simpler (and far cheaper) construction, that's certainly what I'd go for.

Our village house has modern bathrooms, and there's no obvious sign that the outlet is to a septic rather than an external sewer system. If there was, or if the septic was causing problems, I would have sorted out the external connection a long time ago!

I think some expats find the toilet-paper-goes-in-the-little-bin issue to be a bit of a culture shock when they first come here, but it's an easy habit to pick up. We're used to it, having lived in Cyprus and Bulgaria for some years, so it's no big deal. In these two countries, it's assumed that most of us have to use the bin even if we're on mains sewerage. Your septic will definitely be happier if you don't clog it up with a bunch of soggy paper. :-)

We adjusted to the toilet paper bin thing fairly fast on our first trip to Bulgaria, though I also buy septic friendly camping toilet paper just in case hubby "forgets"!

The old cesspit is located in a corner, very, very close to two walls.  I wouldn't want any more extensive digging done so near to those walls. When the builder working on the kitchen and bathroom took the old drummy plaster off to replaster the walls, my neighbour sent me a photo that almost made me cry! They're scarily badly built! But as they've stood for 60 years with minimal cracking, I hope we'll get another 30 or so from them. 

I think a more modern septic could be installed in a different location behind the bathroom, but that would require rerouting the pipes to exit the bathroom via the west wall rather than the north wall. The land slopes up fairly steeply at the back, so the new septic tank would need a deep hole. It's an expense and hassle I hope we can avoid by keeping the old one going.

If we need to change it, we'll definitely be going for the simplest and cheapest workable option. Thankfully our mayor is very easy-going and it's highly unlikely that EU regulations for such things will be enforced. I also don't need to worry about ground water contamination as there are no wells and leaky cesspits or overflows could contaminate.

Merry Christmas!

Our village house has mains sewage - lucky us - but our house in Sofia has an old (and now basically illegal) septic tank which, along with several of our neighbours' systems, appears to drain into a "communal ditch" running down to a mountain gulley.  The ditch never smells bad, even in the height of summer, but I certainly don't enquire too closely into the precise arrangements and neither do any of the neighbours...

The municipality just laugh when I ask about getting connected to the existing mains sewage here.

@JimJ

Our village is one of the rare country villages with mains sewerage, the mayor installed it a few years ago. We're on the slopes of the Stara Planina, so I guess gravity is our friend. :-) I'm not sure of the topology, but I think that 6 or 7 long downpipes (with a couple of cross pipes) were enough to give most of the village access... and then each house installs their own connection.

I walk extensively all around the village, and both up and down the mountain. I've never found the final outlet, (I'm guessing the downpipes all flow into one final outlet pipe, but there might be 6 or 7 separate outlets). I think this communal system is exactly like yours, just for the whole village, not just you and a few of your neighbours. :-) As I have 500 neighbours, I also prefer not to inquire too closely. :-)