Flooded biotech - Biotech unit is filling from outflow

[wetnweary]

We have a biotech unit that was new 3 years ago and has been working well until Friday. We realised when water flooded up through an outside drain that the unit was full of liquid however. We crossed our legs til the tanker arrived yesterday to empty the unit. Sadly once the unit was empty our problems became clearer as we could see a steady waterfall from our outlet pipe flowing back into the unit. We are towards the bottom of a valley with agricultural land above, and suspected our problems might be from neighboring ditches that seemed to have backed up. We dug through and cleared the framer's ditches yesterday, clearing most of the run off from the field, but our problem continues. This has been after an almost dry week, when we've never experienced probs before, despite very heavy rain on occasions. Council / environment agency aren't interested - meantime we have no foul water facility... One contractor has suggested digging up the drainage field (our garden), the other jetting the outflow pipe. We do know there must be an underground spring nearby as there is a decommissioned well at one end of the garden. Any ideas of best steps?

[flowjoe]

If water is pouring back into the tank from the outlet it sounds as though the soak-away has saturated.

Or possibly given the lay of the land your soak-away is also draining the surrounding land, but this would have been the case since the unit was installed so it is less likely.

You need to find the extent of the existing soak-away and carry out tests to see how suitable the ground is for the volume of water you are using. I assume you mean you have a biodisc system so the water should be suitable for discharging into watercourses, ditches, brooks etc, so you could even pump the waste discharge to an outlet, after you have had the waste tested by the EA of course