New septic tank installation - Part 2

The continuation of Part 1 which is the previous post here.

The last two days!

The green lidded thing is the pump to pump the water uphill to the sand filter bed.
Can you see where that pipe for the toilet waste is going?

More trenches, although my OH had been filling in and
laying turf back over the trenches further uphill over the weekend.

Yup, the toilet waste pipe went right under my planter with Gertrude Jekyll the rose in it!

Looking out of my office window at a nice truckful of gravel.

The last morning before David arrived, there was still a lot to do.

The two piles of soil were the best he could get from a quarry as we didn't have enough,
however the quality was atrocious as it was so full of stones and lumps of hard clay.

I had to add this one because I just noticed the other two cats in it!
Hallie is the black one and Bertie the one who is legging it!

I didn't take many pics as it was all about filling in after connecting the pump up to
the electricity, and then sorting out my rainwater pipe to be diverted to the old tank.

Trying to connect the rainwater pipes deserves a mention because of what we discovered! Running a hose into the inspection trap where all the rain from the front of the house comes into before exiting down the pipe to the soakaway only got water going partway along the new pipe. After a while it was discovered that neither the pipe coming from the downpipe from the other side of the roof, nor the pipe to take the rainwater away, had been sealed in. They had big gaps around them. Meaning that for the last 19 years since the previous owners renovated this place, all the rainwater from the entire downpipes around the house had just been soaking into the ground beside the house! Which probably explains why our coat cupboard right by the downpipe at the front of the house is always damp and in the past turned some of our jackets mouldy, until we left the door wide open permanently, so all I can say is thank goodness for free draining soil! So my OH has cemented it all in (all three inspection traps were like this. Bloody cowboy builders!) and it now works. Now we just need some rain!

And so the work was completed at 11pm last Wednesday - thankfully it is daylight here until gone 10pm in summer. 

And afterwards. The next day we set to trying to rake up the worst of the stones, which was a job and a half, given that our soil is stony, but the bought in soil from the quarry was half stone and lumps of solid clay! Somehow we have to also try to define what is gravel driveway and what is lawn.....

You can't really see in any of my photos quite how mounded our new mound is,
it does look quite ridiculous in our sloping lawn and will be hell to mow.

Nice rocks.

A lot of the rubble went to fill in the hole around the two inspection pipes for the toilet waste and the rainwater pipe to the old tank.

At least I have new gravel, although it probably won't be quite enough.

One good thing has come of all this, our toilets flush a lot better now that they are not going slightly uphill (yes really!) to the old septic tank!!!

Today or tomorrow David is bringing us a load of decent topsoil from his own land to finish off; this however will be dumped outside our gate on the grass so we will be barrowing 4 tons of soil up the steep slope of our drive.... so for the meantime the new gravel will not be spread until we are ready. And anyway, it is so dry and dusty here it's just not worth doing anything on a slope until we have had enough decent rain to be able to bed it in. Which might not be until the autumn rains come, but at least we can do the flat bits here and there, because we are not busting a gut as there are enough jobs to do in a garden this size in summer!

New septic tank installation - Part 1

I've divided this into two parts as I have a lot of photos and thought it might be interesting for some (those of you in France who might one day get the dreaded 'fail' at inspection time!) to see just what is involved.

A bit of background: those of us out in the sticks don't have main sewerage. That means we have to get rid of our toilet waste and grey water somehow. In the past that may have meant a halfway decent septic tank system, a cess pit, a pipe running into a ditch or even worse, just piped straight into a river! So France is cleaning up its act and trying to comply with EU regs and that means we now get inspections every 4 years or so to check out our waste disposal. Whilst we passed OK 5 years ago, last year some jobsworth decided our septic tank for toilet waste only, and separate grease trap for grey water, both of which ran into a soakaway and then into the ditch (which is where our stream overflow runs until it goes under the road and continues on as a stream) was no longer acceptable. Fair enough really. Except WE have to foot the bill, and if you can get it in at under €6000 that means you are probably doing the work yourself.

We chose to have a traditional sand filter bed as it is a lot cheaper than biorock, which is a less disruptive but much more expensive way to filter the water coming out of the septic tank. Plus biorock requires maintenance costs too. In a way after seeing the disruption here we kind of wished we had gone for that option, but at the same time it would have required taking out a horse chestnut tree and probably a lot more breaking up of bedrock, so that would have ended up costing us about €10K. As it is, we ended up paying €8K, which is a lot more than it was originally going to cost (although that does include about €400 for new gravel which he kindly fetched for me from a quarry).

The before. I never planted here after a couple of trees fell, due to honey fungus and old age,
because I knew that one day this might have to become a sand filter bed.

The start of the digging out of the sand filter bed.

At first it went well with nice soft soil which was easy to dig;
hitting bedrock came later.

The cats thought it was great fun -
Harry taken through the kitchen window in the evening of the first day!

One corner of the filter bed square was solid rock!

David, the Scottish guy doing our installation after the filter bed hole was completed.

The filter bed gets filled with an enormous amount of sand. That's Harry again.

Who thought the sand was great for rolling in.

By day 4 David had realised this was not going to be a quick job and enlisted the help of
a friend for a couple of days. That's the pipework for the filter bed on the lawn.

Nice mess of pipes going around the old grease trap which was crumbling
and also leaking! Here we have two pipes for rainwater,
two pipes for greywater, and a pipe for the air vent from the tank
which is going up the side of the house in a corner.

The hole for the septic tank. 3/4 of this was solid granite and took many hours
to break up with a rock breaking attachment on the digger
(the reason it cost so much more). It then started filling with water
as I guess we were down level with the ditch outside.

On top of sand goes a layer of thick gravel and that is our new air vent on the corner of the roof.

The pipework in place and more gravel added.
You are only allowed 8" (20cm) of soil on top of this.

Here comes the fun bit. The old septic tank gets pumped out.

And cleaned too, because this will now be my 4000 litre rainwater tank!

5th day - half naked Frenchman starts filling in the filter bed with topsoil
and creating our strange mound in the lawn.

The new tank being part filled with tap water to hold it in place
(and which thanks to new regs only needs to be 3000 litres, thus saving us a hell
of a lot of money as more rock would have had to be broken up to get
a larger tank in! You can see the ground water in the bottom;
this was pumped out umpteen times but just gushed back!

Round the front of the house the toilet waste pipe had to be located and was discovered
that it had been cemented in place which is a big no-no, adding more time and work.
The rainwater pipe also had to be located so it could be diverted.

And here we are at the end of the first week with a temporary toilet pipe going
slightly uphill so we could use the loo during the long Pentecost weekend!

Continues in Part 2.

Moths and moth caterpillars seen recently

When I say recently some of these are dating back about four weeks, but I haven't been able to fit them into other posts. I thought I'd have a bit of coherence for a change. :-) 

This first caterpillar is one that I knew existed as I've seen enough photos of it on the internet whilst trying to ID other ones, so recognised it immediately. This first one was on a raspberry leaf (and welcome to eat it) and the second one I saw was just mooching around in my weedy grass.

Lackey Moth (Malacosoma neustria) caterpillar.

Lackey Moth (Malacosoma neustria) caterpillar again - it's a big one!

One of my favourite caterpillars which I only discovered last year chomping on one of those enormous hairy grey leafed Verbascums is the Mullein Moth caterpillar. This time though I was surprised to find a number on a tall wildflower in my chicken run. This plant only appeared last year and is now in large numbers in the runs, and although it has only tiny insignificant flowers, it's loved by honey bees and all sizes of bumble bee. It's too tall for the hens to get at any of these insects so a good plant to have there. It is Common Figwort (Scrophularia nodosa) and is of the same family as Verbascums (aka Mulleins), Scrophulariaceae.

Mullein Moth (Cucullia verbasci) caterpillar.

Mullein Moth (Cucullia verbasci) caterpillar showing its back end.

And here's one I took last year when it was munching Verbascum.
This time the Mullein Moth caterpillar is showing its front end.

This is the Yellow-tail Moth (Euproctis similis) caterpillar which turns into a pretty moth which
I've not yet seen. Quite often the colourful and hairy caterpillars turn into rather drab adults!

Here are a few moths that I've snapped here and there over the last few weeks. Without their wings spread out I couldn't begin to try to ID them, but I managed to get the one on the right! They are all small ones.

Left and middle, no idea, but right I believe is the Balsam Carpet Moth (Xanthorhoe biriviata)
which was on the bench beside my pond. It must have come from quite a way as the
larval foodplants (various wild Impatiens) are ones I have never heard of,
or seen to my knowledge, anywhere around here.

I was happy to find this little cutie whilst weeding!
It's a Small Mapgie Moth (Eurrhypara hortulata) and I disturbed it whilst weeding.
It's sheltering under a cranesbill geranium leaf.

Large Yellow Underwing Moth (Noctua pronuba) whose larvae are those pesky pests called
cutworms! I've disturbed two whilst weeding recently so I did get to see
those beautiful underwings, but unfortunately not for a photo.

But the star of the show and a very exciting find was the one below. I could squeal and say it's a lifer but most moths would be lifers for me so I am only going to count new butterflies and birds as lifers .... or maybe hawkmoths.... or a Clifden Nonpareil. I think you get the picture, anyway! :-)

A Cream-spot Tiger Moth (Epicallia villica) on my hand.

Cream-spot Tiger Moth (Epicallia villica) - from what I read the females fly during the day
as well as at night, but the males only fly at night. So I can deduce that this is a female.

Cream-spot Tiger Moth (Epicallia villica) - just love those antennae!

So now I have seen three different Tiger moths, the Garden Tiger once last year and the Jersey Tiger which is a common visitor to my garden in the summer.