Even if they don’t have either installed, most people understand a little about emptying a cesspit or a septic tank but know almost nothing about emptying a sewage treatment plant. Maintenance is key to the ongoing performance of a treatment plant. Whereas other liquid waste collection vessels need periodic cesspit emptying or septic tank emptying, sewage treatment plants do not. You can, however, use septic tank installers and emptying companies for STP maintenance.
P.J. Cole (Southern) Ltd covers the East Grinstead area as a sewage treatment plant maintenance specialist. We also offer a full supporting service range for sewage systems, including septic tank repairs and CCTV drain surveys to monitor the integrity of connected mains sewer systems.
And if you need us for cesspit emptying or septic tank emptying, these are still very much the cornerstones of our business and will continue to be so for a long time yet.
Please read our dedicated East Grinstead blog post for more about us and our services.
Cesspits fill sooner than septic tanks because they can’t process liquid waste. They only hold sewage and wastewater. Septic tanks have two or more chambers and use a basic treatment process to produce a cleaner effluent. Even so, they collect solid and suspended waste. This makes emptying important for both. We advise that our East Grinstead customers book in for cesspit emptying every 6 weeks or so, and for septic tank emptying every 12 months.
Your cesspit and septic tank installers will usually advise you on expected emptying intervals during the planning phase. For those who already have soakaways, your installers may perform CCTV drain surveys to see how they’ll handle discharge volumes, and this can affect the eventual size of the tank you have fitted.
You might even find, based on the outcome of a preliminary CCTV drain survey, that instead of a cesspit or a septic tank, installers might offer septic tank repairs or suggest you opt for a sewage treatment plant. Maintenance of plant and sewage systems is important to P.J. Cole (Southern) Ltd and, if you have an STP fitted at your property, it goes without saying it will be important to you too.
A sewage treatment plant uses a very similar process to a septic tank, and it even has a similar design. What makes a sewage treatment plant different is a mechanical system, with a pump, that circulates air to encourage aerobic bacteria growth. This breaks down the effluent more effectively, and it is much better for the environment. In fact, the effluent is clean enough to discharge direct to the watercourse.
Obviously, if a pre-CCTV drain survey has indicated a sewage treatment plant can disperse effluent safely into a soakaway on your property, we can plan for the system to discharge this way instead.
All of this means that, instead of booking in for a similar service to cesspit emptying or septic tank emptying when you own an STP, you can book in for sewage treatment plant maintenance instead. Because plant has moving components, we advise you to think of maintenance as something similar to servicing a car. The more often you service and maintain a car, the better it runs. The more often you maintain an STP, the better it performs too.
We recommend maintenance for sewage treatment plants annually.
Our STP, cesspit and septic tank installers can advise you further on the details of sewage treatment plant maintenance. Should you need advice on CCTV drain surveys for a main sewer system, we can help with that too. P.J. Cole (Southern) Ltd covers East Grinstead and the surrounding areas with practical monitoring and surveillance services, including the following:
TELEPHONE:
01483 200336
ADDRESS:
Frys Cross Farm, Knightons Lane,
Dunsfold, Godalming,
Surrey, GU8 4NY
E-MAIL:
mail@pjcole.com
