I walked out back the other day to feed the dogs their lunch when this ,awful smell hit me in the face like a ton of bricks , the wind was blowing just right and the smell was coming from the back deck , I thought for a minute the dogs had dragged up something dead from the woods to roll in , their favorite thing to do of late , they both smell like a couple of skunks. I walked around from where I thought it was coming from and there in the dirt and grass looked like a scene from the ole Beverly Hillbilly's t.v. show (" up from the ground popped a bubbling crude") there was a bubbling , But it was not crude this was bubbling SH-- coming from the buried sewer tank under the poured deck and ground. When we remodeled the house 7 years ago we took a look at the system and (knowing nothing about them ) thought it looked ok to me , the contractor never said anything different, Sooo we poured a concrete deck over it with a plug left to clean it out when it got full, this is usually about every 3 or 4 months ,I knew it was already old when we moved in but what I didn't know was that when they put it in almost 15 years ago they did not put gravel or rocks around the outside and did not seal the concrete top when they put it on and after all these years when the rainy season came the holes in the lid and between the two culverts were letting it fill up with water and pushing the sewer water out the top holes , thus the bubbling stinky stuff. Well with nothing left to do but put in a new sewer system ,BUTT the only problem was that all the PVC pipes from the toilets were also encased in the concrete deck.Would you believe I had a dream as to how to fix the problem . First ,we dug a 5 mete hole beside the deck and put in 2 huge concrete culverts and sealed them and sealed the cover as well , with the hole in the top we we put a 6in. PVC with a elbow and ,then where the old system came to the side if the deck , punched a hole in the side close to the bottom and ran the PVC pipe in there, and sealed around it good , sooo when the old system fills to the pipe the water and stuff them flow thru the PVC, from the old , into the new system that is lower than the old one thus utilizing some of the old and also a new system , we then, back filled around with rocks and gravel and packed the top soil real good, . and WALA it works like I hoped and prayed it would , now instead of have the POOP sucker come every 3 or 4 months and as if late with the problem , more like every 2 months , hopefully it will be every 6 or 7 months , will cost more , because of pumping two systems but will be a while in between pumping, that the truck does not have to drive on the grass , which always takes a week or two to look normal again.Another thing that we did was to put a gas vent in the system to keep the smell and gas from coming back into the toilet when you flushed sometimes , now nooo smell and gases stay outside and away from the house .I hope you understood all this high tec (dreaming)Thailand ingenuity, anyway life is never boring here in Wang Pho and especially at the Burgess's. Well at least I didn't just run a blue PVC pipe out the back and let it run into a hole in the ground , which most Thais that live in the country side do , on the plus side of things here on Moo1 , is that since we have moved here and I have talked to all our neighbors about the importance of sanitation and clean yards and surroundings they have all installed sewer systems and I can really smell the difference when the wind blows from their way up to ours and I have also noticed that we have almost no flys and the mosquitoes are a lot less in the evenings ,when you are outside working or playing ..
Well that's an up-date on thing here at our house , the new project is a pathway with stepping stones from the carport to the side deck , which I will report and post pictures next time .. Hope you enjoy this post and pictures and are any of you taking on summer projects ??? if so then what ??
