Installation of our new fosse - part deux - Tuesday: starting work, clearing the drive, emptying the current fosse
Following on from the first part of our new fosse installation story, the first day of construction proper (Tuesday) was started with a rude awakening with all the equipment being unloaded outside our bedroom window.
Pretty quickly Tony (the English owner of the plant hire company) got to work with the mini digger, scraping to one side the existing gravel from the driveway whilst Nic (one of his French workers who spoke quite a bit of English) and Bennodet (his other French worker who spoke no English) helped scraping back gravel with shovels and started laying out the pipe-work.
Just behind the digger in the photo above you can see the monster 5000 litre septic tank.
Just 45 minutes after they arrived Tony had already cleared the gravel off the driveway, dug the first hole, dropped in the grey plastic fat trap tank 'downstream' of the kitchen in the current house (leaving the existing fat trap in place), and Nic was laying the pipe-work down a trench dug by Tony in front of the house.
This seemed to set the way of working for pretty much all of the time they were with us - Tony would do all the driving, digging and levelling with the mini diggers whilst Nic and Bennodet would do all the labouring, laying pipes, shovelling things, gluing pipes together and shifting soil around, etc. I guess it's the perk of being the company boss to be able to drive the mini digger!
They also never really let up the pace of work at all. There were frequent tea's and coffee's supplied by Liz and I (well mainly Liz), and they stopped for those and chocolate biscuit breaks, but apart from the obligatory French lunch break in the restaurant in our village, they just kept on working continually throughout the day. Even when it started raining that day they put on Macs and kept on going.
As I showed on the plan for the new fosse system, half the new fosse system (fat traps and connection to the existing pipe-work) was in the courtyard in front of the house, the septic tank itself was in the garden adjacent to the courtyard, whilst the soak-away bed was some 40m away round the back of the second (older) house, up the hill, and underneath where the climbing frame was situated. Consequently there was lots of digging to be done at each end of the garden and pipe-work to be laid back and forth between the two halves.
To make this easier Nic and Bennodet took down the garden fence by the roadside next to the soakaway so they could get materials and diggers in off the road.
Just before they took the fence down I dismantled the climbing frame and took this 'before' photo showing the undisurbed garden! You can see how the garden was laid to lawn with a few fruit trees and bushes and then a hedge dividing our garden and the neighbours.
Once they’d taken down the fence Tony made short work of removing and piling up the top soil from the garden into a big heap and then the first smaller lorry arrived to tip a load of sand for the filter bed.
I hadn't noticed it at the time but apparently the farmer arrived at about 9ish to empty the fosse and they sent him away again as they weren't ready. Later on he came back as arranged with his tractor and tanker, just as the second (enormous) lorry arrived and started tipping the remainder of the 35 cubic metres of gravel for the filter bed.
So one end of the road was blocked by the tipper lorry and the other end was blocked by Tony’s flatbed and the farmer’s tractor and tanker. Just then Liz arrived back from shopping and of course couldn’t actually get to the house with all the equipment blocking the road!
The farmer made pretty short work of sucking out the contents of the old septic tank and fat trap and I was €50 lighter in the wallet when I’d paid him – still it was better than the €150-200 bill that I would have had to pay if I’d got an official septic tank emptying company to come and do the job for me.
Although the farmer only took 20 minutes or so to empty the septic, we did have an amusing moment when he first turned on the pump on his tanker and accidentally set it to ‘blow’ rather than ‘suck’. With one end of the pipe resting in the congealed fat and liquids in the fat trap the resultant fountain of effluent caused everyone to dive for cover and there were lots of frantic shouting in French as to the error being made!
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Pretty quickly Tony (the English owner of the plant hire company) got to work with the mini digger, scraping to one side the existing gravel from the driveway whilst Nic (one of his French workers who spoke quite a bit of English) and Bennodet (his other French worker who spoke no English) helped scraping back gravel with shovels and started laying out the pipe-work.
Just behind the digger in the photo above you can see the monster 5000 litre septic tank.
Just 45 minutes after they arrived Tony had already cleared the gravel off the driveway, dug the first hole, dropped in the grey plastic fat trap tank 'downstream' of the kitchen in the current house (leaving the existing fat trap in place), and Nic was laying the pipe-work down a trench dug by Tony in front of the house.
This seemed to set the way of working for pretty much all of the time they were with us - Tony would do all the driving, digging and levelling with the mini diggers whilst Nic and Bennodet would do all the labouring, laying pipes, shovelling things, gluing pipes together and shifting soil around, etc. I guess it's the perk of being the company boss to be able to drive the mini digger!
They also never really let up the pace of work at all. There were frequent tea's and coffee's supplied by Liz and I (well mainly Liz), and they stopped for those and chocolate biscuit breaks, but apart from the obligatory French lunch break in the restaurant in our village, they just kept on working continually throughout the day. Even when it started raining that day they put on Macs and kept on going.
As I showed on the plan for the new fosse system, half the new fosse system (fat traps and connection to the existing pipe-work) was in the courtyard in front of the house, the septic tank itself was in the garden adjacent to the courtyard, whilst the soak-away bed was some 40m away round the back of the second (older) house, up the hill, and underneath where the climbing frame was situated. Consequently there was lots of digging to be done at each end of the garden and pipe-work to be laid back and forth between the two halves.
To make this easier Nic and Bennodet took down the garden fence by the roadside next to the soakaway so they could get materials and diggers in off the road.
Just before they took the fence down I dismantled the climbing frame and took this 'before' photo showing the undisurbed garden! You can see how the garden was laid to lawn with a few fruit trees and bushes and then a hedge dividing our garden and the neighbours.
Once they’d taken down the fence Tony made short work of removing and piling up the top soil from the garden into a big heap and then the first smaller lorry arrived to tip a load of sand for the filter bed.
I hadn't noticed it at the time but apparently the farmer arrived at about 9ish to empty the fosse and they sent him away again as they weren't ready. Later on he came back as arranged with his tractor and tanker, just as the second (enormous) lorry arrived and started tipping the remainder of the 35 cubic metres of gravel for the filter bed.
So one end of the road was blocked by the tipper lorry and the other end was blocked by Tony’s flatbed and the farmer’s tractor and tanker. Just then Liz arrived back from shopping and of course couldn’t actually get to the house with all the equipment blocking the road!
The farmer made pretty short work of sucking out the contents of the old septic tank and fat trap and I was €50 lighter in the wallet when I’d paid him – still it was better than the €150-200 bill that I would have had to pay if I’d got an official septic tank emptying company to come and do the job for me.
Although the farmer only took 20 minutes or so to empty the septic, we did have an amusing moment when he first turned on the pump on his tanker and accidentally set it to ‘blow’ rather than ‘suck’. With one end of the pipe resting in the congealed fat and liquids in the fat trap the resultant fountain of effluent caused everyone to dive for cover and there were lots of frantic shouting in French as to the error being made!
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Labels: Gite, Renovations
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