The result of our drain survey is back… red is good, right? 

We only had our drains survey done just before Christmas, so were pleasantly surprised to get the results back so quickly. As we’re not on mains drainage, we have a septic tank and a soakaway for grey water waste (showers and sinks). The survey was done to check what’s in place already for the farmhouse, so we could understand what changes we’d need to accommodate additional accommodation we’re adding to the site, and what we could reuse (mainly for the listed cottage that sits slightly above the farmhouse on the hillside). 

Our pleasant surprise evaporated quite quickly as we reviewed the report… the report contained checks on all sorts of things from the quality of manhole covers, to the state of the pipework, and the quality of the septic tank itself. And it turns out there’s a lot wrong! Some of the work is required because the setup is just old and worn; but some appears to be down to poor building work and cut corners. We were expecting to have to do some work regardless, so this is less about inconvenience and more frustrating about the additional costs we’re incurring, especially as we watch general building costs increasing around us!  

We now have a separate specialist company creating a proposal for the whole site, so we’ll see what comes back from that. A few people have warned us about the complexities of having shared drains, although having 4 separate septic tanks is going to be expensive… 

One good bit of news is that we’ve found a company to dig the trial pits for our structural survey – the final thing required before we can complete our detailed designs and go back to the council for approval and to move to the next stage. The trial pits will be located at key points around (and importantly inside) our barns to check the extent of the foundations – which means we now need to clear a few areas first. The first company we found weren’t able to dig the internal trial pits, which caused a short setback, but luckily after our monthly meeting with our architect, we were contacted by a second company, who turned up the same day for a site visit and provided a quote the next day. Amazing service!! 

It’s quite interesting to see just how many construction companies specialise in very specific areas instead of covering related activity where they could easily upsell services to clients – both the drains companies we’ve used specialise (one in doing surveys and one in creating new proposals); and three out of the four structural companies specialise (two in digging trial pits and one in the structural design; only one – the last one – being a wider groundworks company). Definitely an eye-opening experience, and it explains why construction is just so complicated, having to line everything up!