Fosse Septic

[Beris]

Hi all,

Some advice from the learned ones!

We are in the process of purchasing a small farm property in Aveyron, habitable house, small house, large barn, small barn, we signed the first contract in July this year in which it stated that, and I quote,

 the vendor declares that the property sold herein is served by an individual drainage system in working order and that it has not been checked by the authorised municipal services.

Permissions were received this week for all the renovations we plan to carry out and a letter from our lawyer after she had been through the notaires completion paperwork before our signing.  In an item headed Drainage for the house:- the draft completion deed states that there is no mains drainage and nor is there an individual drainage system, she then goes on to say, This is not what was stated in the first contract-this said there was an individual drainage system.

The house has a bathroom with hand basin, shower and toilet, were it goes I do not know.

We submitted plans for a 7.500lt tank but was not intending to install until the middle of next year. as we were going to live in the house whilst carrying out the renovations to the other properties.

Thoughts on the above please,before we sign and any ideas on temp toilets for a family of five, four adults.

Many thanks

Beris

[Clair]

Rough outline:

"individual drainage system in working order" can cover all sorts of systems, from the "drain in a dry well" (puisard) to a state-of-the-art self-contained fosse.

the fact that "it has not been checked by the authorised municipal services" simply means that there has been no recent inspection/approval, which points to the system being very basic as this inspection/approval is something which is going to be required by law from 01/01/06...

My view: I don't think you can do anything about it. The wording is too vague. The local DDE (works dept) will probably grant you permission for any work conditional to you bringing your septic tank system up to the new rules, which is going to be the case everywhere in France anyway.

Re what to do in the meantime: if there is a bathroom in the house, I presume it has been used, so you should be fine using it too, but I would definitely bring the whole thing to standard sooner rather than later, when everyone will HAVE TO do it and the "artisans" will be swamped with requests...

The size of the tank depends on the number of bedrooms in the property. We fitted a tank for 6 bedrooms, even though we only have 3 for now, but we are considering putting 3 more in the attic at a later stage... There are other considerations as well: drainage field, nearby wells/water sources, soil absorption...

Sorry I cannot be more helpful...

Clair