Foreign Perspectives

We’ve been having problems with our septic tank for the last month or two which have been getting progressively worse. So much so, that the guy next door has had to pump it out every week for nearly a month now. This in turn has prompted his brother-in-law (the soon to be new owner of the house attached to the winery) to order a new septic tank. That in turn has forced us to order a new one…

Neither of them are proper “country folk” and therefore they didn’t know a whole lot about what’s supposed to happen. OK, I’m not dyed-in-the-wool country folk either but I spent every summer at our country cottage for over twenty years and even watched my Dad install our own septic tank. Anyway, I figured that it filling up every week had nothing to do with it being knackerd (which was their thinking). Things eventually got so bad that they ended up calling in the grand-daughter of the owner before the guy I bought it off and she got to the root of the problem right away… seems that the bit of land across the road which I own is owned by me because that is where the runoff from the septic tank comes out. Now, bearing in mind that the previous owner knew nothing about the system it’s been quite some time since said outlet pipe was known about and in the intervening years (at least 5 we think) it’s become completely overgrown, hence complete blockage and we’ve now sorted the problem in the ten minutes it took to dig out all the stuff that’s grown over it in the meantime.

Aide from giving me a chance to practise a lot of French that you don’t use everyday, they’ve told me that we’re going to have to get a septic tank anyway as new regulations coming into force (they think) next year will require it.

Separately, we’ve also found out that what we thought was the newest part of the house is in fact the oldest, having been built around 1776 (it was completely renovated in her grandfather’s time). We’ll have to invite her round for dinner sometime to see if we can find out some more of the history.