The Great 14 Year Restoration Job, Part 2

We didn’t have a septic tank so while all the building of the bathrooms was going on I asked Ross Norman the digger man to come and create a temporary septic tank for us. Actually, it was really just a long drop concept. It was not long before Ross had dug a shallow trench between the house and the top of the driveway. Greg the plumber had already plumbed up the pipe work under the house for the three new toilets so all we needed to do was hook the pipes leading to the temporary long drop, and we were all done! This was Ross’s design. It worked so well. The holes were massively deep and wide. The idea was that when one hole filled up the overflow would flow into the next hole. As you can see from the photos, we covered the holes with old ply and then a sheet of plastic and then covered this up with plants that we dragged in clumps over the top. This meant that when we needed to get a tanker in to empty them, we’d just drag the clumps of plants off, take the plastic and ply off, do the empty, and put it all back together again. It worked so well. We used this for two years with guests coming and going. Waste water from the showers, kitchen sink and washing machine was piped into a sink hole over the bank at the front of the property in the bush. There was a filter attached to the pipe to filter out bits of food so as to not attract rats. Rat bait stations were positioned all around the area, just in case. We had to be ingenious at every stage, finding cheap but effective ways of doing things. 151