Cottage Q&A
QUESTIONWe have a two-year-old, year-round cottage on Lake Winnipeg. Our holding tank is concrete and is around 4.5 metres away from the cottage. Sometimes, we can smell the waste from the holding tank, which is only half full. What is causing this and what can we do to prevent it?
Tim Wall, via e-mail
ANSWER
Ray Banach, owner of On Site Assessments, a wastewater and environmental management company in North Bay, has seen - or rather smelled - this before and says the odour is almost certainly seeping through the lid that caps your holding tank. Some lids are shaped like a bath plug - slightly greater in diameter at the top - and simply drop flush into the top of the tank. Those lids are not typically designed to be sealed tight and by exposing them to air, you run the chance of wafting sewage smells clearing your cottage patio faster than a swarm of hornets. Rob Davis, a septic specialist with EcoEthic, in Sunderland, Ont., says it doesn't matter if the tank is empty or full - dirt needs to cover the cap and advises having at least a foot of soil on top. (Don't forget to mark where the opening is, or you might force an irate septic tank pumper to dig a trench from where the pipe exits the cottage to find the tank.)
Another style of lid has a pipe-like collar that usually sticks five to eight centimetres out of the ground. If it doesn't have a tight-fitting seal, as it should, smelly gases will escape.
A third, though less likely, possibility is that you have a unrelated plumbing problem. Plumbing stacks provide an escape route for gases in indoor pipes and usually vent about a metre above the cottage roof. If the vent is too low - or poorly positioned - then you could be outdoors breathing in the not-so-great indoors
Steve Brearton
* Published in the July/August 2006 issue of Cottage Life
