Septic Tank Problems Landkey | What Owners Must Know

Your garden smells like it shouldn't. There's a soggy patch of grass that never quite dries out, even in July. Or your kitchen sink is gurgling in a way that has nothing to do with the washing-up. If you're in Landkey, Bishop's Tawton, Swimbridge, or anywhere else in the rural belt east of Barnstaple, you're probably not on mains sewerage. That means you're responsible for your own drainage system, and right now, something in it is telling you it needs attention.

Don't panic. Off-mains drainage is manageable when you understand what you're dealing with. Here's what's likely happening and what you need to do about it.

How Off-Mains Drainage Actually Works

Most rural properties in the EX31 and EX32 postcode areas that sit outside the Newport, Sticklepath or Roundswell edges of Barnstaple rely on one of three things: a septic tank with a soakaway, a sewage treatment plant, or occasionally a cesspit. The differences matter.

Septic tanks take your waste, settle the solids into sludge at the bottom, and allow the partially treated liquid (called effluent) to drain away through a soakaway into the surrounding ground. The sludge stays in the tank until you have it emptied, typically once a year.

Sewage treatment plants go a step further. They aerate the waste, producing cleaner effluent that meets a higher standard before it leaves the system. More mechanical parts, more maintenance, but better output.

Cesspits do nothing to treat waste at all. They're simply holding tanks that fill up and need emptying regularly. If you have one, you'll know it by how often the tanker comes.

For this post, the focus is on septic tanks and soakaways, because that's what the majority of Landkey and Swimbridge properties have, and because the regulations around them changed significantly in 2020.

The 2020 Rules You Can't Ignore

In January 2020, the Environment Agency's General Binding Rules for small sewage discharges came into force across England. If you own a property with a septic tank, these rules apply to you and ignoring them isn't really an option any more.

The key change: septic tanks are no longer permitted to discharge effluent directly into a watercourse, ditch, stream or surface drain. Given the number of old stone-built cottages and farmhouses around Landkey, Fremington and Instow with septic tanks that were installed before anyone much cared where the effluent went, a lot of systems were immediately non-compliant.

What does compliance actually look like?

• Effluent from a septic tank must discharge to a correctly designed and functioning soakaway, not to any surface water.
• If your tank currently drains to a ditch or stream, you need to either install a soakaway or replace the septic tank with a sewage treatment plant.
• The rules also require that the system doesn't cause pollution, that it's regularly desludged (the Environment Agency suggests at least once a year), and that it's maintained in working order.

If you're selling a rural property in the EX31 or EX32 area, solicitors are now routinely asking for evidence that the drainage system is compliant. Getting caught out at the point of sale is an expensive surprise. Getting caught out by the Environment Agency beforehand is worse.

What Goes Wrong With Septic Tanks

Septic tanks fail for a handful of reasons, and most of them announce themselves gradually before they become a crisis.

Sludge overload. The tank fills up with accumulated sludge and stops doing its job. Effluent quality drops, and eventually solids start passing through into the soakaway. Once solids clog a soakaway, the damage is hard to reverse. Annual emptying by a licensed waste carrier prevents this entirely.

Inlet or outlet blockage. The inlet pipe from the house can become blocked with grease, wet wipes (yes, even in rural Devon), or root ingress. The outlet baffle, which stops floating solids leaving the tank, can corrode or break off. Either problem disrupts the whole system.

Structural cracking. Older brick or concrete tanks, particularly those installed in the 1960s to 1980s, can crack over time. Groundwater gets in, which hydraulically overloads the system. Effluent can get out into soil it shouldn't reach. Neither is good.

Biological die-off. The bacteria inside the tank do the work of breaking down solids. Putting excessive quantities of bleach, disinfectants or antibacterial cleaners down your drains can kill them off. The tank then fails to process waste properly. It's a less common cause of failure than the ones above, but worth knowing.

What Goes Wrong With Soakaways

The soakaway is often the first thing to fail, and it's the part that's hardest to fix cheaply.

A soakaway works by dispersing effluent slowly through a bed of gravel or rubble into the surrounding soil. Over years, the bio-mat, a layer of biological material, builds up on the gravel surface and gradually reduces the rate at which liquid can drain away. At a certain point, it can't cope with the volume it receives.

Signs your soakaway is failing:

• Wet, boggy ground over or near the soakaway area, even in dry weather
• Slow drainage throughout the house, getting worse gradually over months
• Strong sewage smell in the garden near the tank or soakaway
• Effluent surfacing on the ground (an immediate Environment Agency reportable event)

Soakaway failure is more common in clay-heavy ground. If you're on the heavier soils that you find across parts of Landkey and Bishop's Tawton, drainage rates are lower to start with, and a soakaway that was marginal when installed can fail within ten or fifteen years.

A soakaway that has bio-mat clogging can sometimes be rested, alternating between two soakaway fields if your system was designed with that option. More often, you're looking at either installing a new soakaway in a different area of the garden (if you have the space and the percolation test results support it) or upgrading to a sewage treatment plant which produces cleaner effluent and puts less biological load on the ground.

Getting a CCTV Survey on an Off-Mains System

If you're not sure what state your system is in, a CCTV drain survey is one of the most useful things you can do before spending money on anything else. We can camera the inlet and outlet pipes, inspect any accessible chambers, and give you a clear picture of what's there, what condition it's in, and whether there's anything obviously wrong.

For anyone buying a rural property in the Landkey or Swimbridge area, I'd say a CCTV survey of the drainage system is as important as a structural survey. You can see a crack in a wall. You can't see a collapsing tank or a failed baffle without looking inside.

Emptying: Who, How Often, and What the Law Says

Your septic tank must be emptied by a licensed waste carrier. The sludge is controlled waste under UK law and can't just be spread on a field without the right permits. A reputable desludging contractor will take it away and dispose of it legally.

Frequency depends on the size of the tank and the number of people in the household. For a typical three-bedroom property occupied by four people, once a year is a reasonable starting point. Smaller tanks or larger households may need emptying twice a year. Your desludging contractor should be able to advise based on how full it is when they arrive.

Keep a record of every desludge. Date, contractor, volume removed. The Environment Agency can ask for this, and it's useful evidence of compliance if you ever need it.

What Drainsco Can Help With

We're drain engineers, not septic tank installers or waste carriers. Where we come in is on the pipework side of things: blocked inlet or outlet pipes, root ingress into the lines between your house and the tank, CCTV surveys of the system, high-pressure water jetting to clear partial blockages, and gully clearance around the property.

If you've got a soakaway or chamber that needs inspecting, or you're buying a rural property in the EX31 or EX32 area and want eyes on the drainage before you exchange, that's our territory. We cover Landkey, Swimbridge, Fremington, Bishop's Tawton, Braunton and the whole rural spread around Barnstaple.

For the actual emptying of the tank, you need a licensed waste carrier with a tanker. For a new soakaway or sewage treatment plant installation, you need a drainage contractor with the right groundworks experience and you'll need to notify the Environment Agency. We can tell you honestly what we can help with and point you in the right direction for what we can't.

When the Problem Is Urgent

Some situations need same-day attention:

• Effluent surfacing on the ground above your soakaway
• Drains backing up into the house from the septic system
• Visible collapse of any chamber or inspection cover
• A strong sewage smell inside the property

These aren't problems to watch for a few days. Surfacing effluent is a pollution risk and a health risk, and the Environment Agency takes it seriously. If your system is actively backing up into the house, that needs clearing before anything else.

One Last Thought on the 2020 Rules

A lot of rural homeowners around Landkey and Swimbridge still haven't looked properly at whether their system is compliant. If you've been in the property for years and the tank has always just sat there quietly, it's easy to assume everything is fine. It might be. But if you have an old system that drains to a ditch or stream, or if the soakaway is clearly struggling, the time to sort it is before you have a pollution incident or a failed sale, not after.

Drainsco covers the EX31 and EX32 postcodes, we're on call 24 hours a day, there's no call-out fee, and we'll give you a clear price before we start any work. If you're not sure what's going on with your off-mains drainage, ring us and we'll talk it through.