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If we have no septic where is the wast going?


Mattyj198

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We started buying a house in France

back in June of 2010, it is now almost February 2011 and the deal has

still not gone through. Everything has gone wrong including the

seller going into hospital for emergency surgery. Now that the deal

has gone into 2011 apparently France has some new laws on septic

systems. I am not 100% sure what it is but they have now done some

survey or test and have found that the house is without one. The

town is to small for a sewer so my question is, where is all the

waste going?

We had a bad feeling that the house

might not have a septic but even knowing it does not we still want to

buy the place. It is not a barn conversion. It is a 300 year old

house. People have been living in it right up to this day.

The town says that they will be putting

sewer in within the next few years. How much on average does it cost

to hook up to sewer?

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Matty - someone else will know better than me, but the effect of the new law (if it is now in force - I'm not sure) is that the person selling you the house should give you a copy of the report from the official body responsible for inspecting drainage arrangements - it's called SPANC.

You are lucky if there is shortly to be a collective sewerage scheme in your (prospective) village: having a septic tank of your own is not really a great deal of fun. In these schemes it's fairly common to run the sewer down the middle of them main street: is it downhill from your house to that, or uphill (or is it all fairly level)?  Because it'll cost you extra if the waste has to be pumped uphill to the sewer.

Good luck with the new house anyway: I hope the sale goes through earlier rather than later.

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[quote user="Mattyj198"] I doubt the septic is under the house.

[/quote]

Why not?  Ours is buried under the barn floor and because of the available land does not have the acres of drainage field normally associated with a fosse. It's just a 1500 litre concrete tank with a small sand filter and works very well. I've seen pictures on here of odd concrete tanks situated in cellars. Our neighbour has no fosse - he has a drain which wends it's way through the hamlet (there are only 2 houses attached to it) and disappears, to emerge, we suspect in the river which is not too far away :-)

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Am currently helping two British families sell their houses in France. They have both been subject to this new law that came into effect in January. One signs for the sale today (Friday 28 Jan 2011) and the Notaire asked for the certificate two weeks ago. Luckily their SPANC inspection was done less than 3 years ago so the inspection paper is valid. The other has never had a SPANC inspection, am getting it done next month for the sale. We bought our house 21 years ago in a village and were told that mains sewer will be available "in 5 years". We were eventually connected last year. It will take the village 30 years to pay off the loans to have the work done. We paid 500 Euros as our participation towards the connection.(everyone in the village who has the connection availabler has to whether they are connected or not) Then an extra 1,6 euros, rising to 2.0 extra per cubic meter of water used. We then did the work ourselves to physically connect the toilets etc (easy work as we had prepared everything). Our neighbour opposite in a new house has had to destroy his patio, lay pipes 20 meters down his garden to connect - all at his own expense, plus the 500 euros etc Our local water board is considering a possible financial aid towards the installation of new septic tanks where the SPANC inspection shows one is needed. Even if there are plans to put in mains sewers in the future, you will still have to have a septic tank installed. The new houses in our village that were constructed just 2 years before mains sewers came in had to have them installed. The advice is now to uses them to store water to water the garden! Although the principals are the same, every commune will have a different interpretation of what to do. The best thing to do IMO is to talk to the Secrertary/Mayor in your village and the water board to find out exactly what the future plans are.
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We bought a house late last year and thought everything was going ok. When we came to sign the acte de vente both we and the estate agent were suprised to be told thast the notaire had recieved a letter from the mayor stating that the house had 'no drainage'. Confusion ensued. We defered signing and made phone calls. The sellers were adamamnt that there was a fosse. They had lived there on and off for about 5 years. Turns out that the mayor meant there was no drainage on their records (going back only 10 years apparantly and the building was converted over 15 years ago). The estate agent also thought that what was there wouldn't conform to the new regs. and the mayor was trying to bump his figures up for houses with regulation fosse systems. Fortunatly the sellers agreed to put up 4000 euros towards the cost of updating the fosse to allow the sale to continue, We have found the fosse as no one knew where it was and have just had soil tests done before sorting out installation of new system.
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We looked at a small house in a village called Les Roches. As the name suggests it was built on rocky ground, no sign of a fosse and the builder reckoned that the waste just drained out through the rocky land. He also thought the village would never be put on mains drainage as it was so rocky that it would not be possible. We didn't buy[;-)]

The village where we have a house is not tout à l'egout though 11 years ago when we purchased we were told by the agent that in two years time the whole of France would be tout à l'egout,[Www] .............we are still waiting, our commune is in the red and  has no money to pay for it so I don't see it happening anytime soon.[blink]

P.S. our fosse works well!

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[quote user="ericd"]And during that time, all the local cows continue to S"""t and P""s at will in the countryside, near the rivers or drinking water wells...........[Www][/quote]

Are you recommending that if I ate grass and water only then I would not need a "fosse septique toutes eaux".[8-)]

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In the old farmhouse where we were living until 2009, the septic tank was a 500 litre concrete job (I don't think I'll bother rephrasing that) partially buried in the cellar. But septic tanks in the cellar are usually easy to find, as the grass doesn't grow down there. As it is pretty small, the septic tank itself just takes what goes down the WC: the sinks drain away into the septic tank's outfall pipe. I'm waiting to hear what SPANC have to say about that. They are coming next month.

And round here, many of the farmers empty their own septic tanks, not very often it's true, and then spray it on the fields. I'm not sure that doesn't somehow defeat the object of having one. The grass grows nicely though.

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"And round here, many of the farmers empty their own septic tanks, not

very often it's true, and then spray it on the fields. I'm not sure that

doesn't somehow defeat the object of having one. The grass grows nicely

though."

I believe that is against the law but still goes on.[Www]

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[quote user="Araucaria"]the septic tank was a 500 litre concrete job (I don't think I'll bother rephrasing that) partially buried in the cellar. As it is pretty small, the septic tank itself just takes what goes down the WC: the sinks drain away into the septic tank's outfall pipe. I'm waiting to hear what SPANC have to say about that. They are coming next month.[/quote]

I would be interested to hear about what they have to say as our system is exactly as you describe. When we bought the house 12 months ago, we were given 4 years to put "our tank" in order.[Www]

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We have a system like that too, except the concrete tank is outside, about a metre away from the wall where the toilet wastepipe exits.

The inspector said all we needed to do was have it emptied and make a bac à graisse. But evidently his boss didn't agree and we got a bad report.

2012 is supposed to be crunch time - but I can't see it being enforced in a hurry.

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