URGENT advice needed re blocked drain thing

[Chrissie]

Help!  (As it's Saturday afternoon I can't get any drains firms to answer their phones......)

We bought a house that is supposed to be connected to the mains drainage system, but today, while investigating a small tree that had uprooted itself in the night, I found a huge boggy patch, centred on a sort of drain thing that I didn't know existed.  This is about 8 inches in diameter, black rigid plastic, with a removable cover.  It contained some totally rotten and disintegrating stuff that looked like layers of roof insulation and I assume is/was some sort of filtration device, which went down only about 4 inches.  After that there seems to be nothing but sand.  The water was quite clear when I started fiddling about, and I took out about a bucketful, but has since become sandy and possibly a bit soapy, so I think it must be taking the grey water from the house, and indeed it has filled up again since.  There seems to be no inlet or outlet anywhere down to where I can reach (uuurrgghh - I HATE doing things like this), so I then tried prodding the sand with a long metal rod and it goes down to about 2 foot deep before hitting anything hard but nothing seems to clear.

Any ideas as to what I can do between now and Monday, apart from using as little water as possible......[:-))]

Also, is this set-up normal?  When they changed from fosse to drains, would they have kept the old fosse filtration system and then connected it to the drains?  Should I be maintaining it in some way?

Chrissie (81)

 

[PaulT]

Would have thought they would have just rerouted the pipe going to the fosse to the main drain. The old system being left in place - after all, why dig it up which would cost for no real gain. Any rubbish, chuck it in the old fosse saves carting it away.

[Chrissie]

Yes, you would think so!

Chrissie (81)