Oswestry · SY10, SY11

Septic Tank Installation & Replacement in Oswestry

Replacement of failed or non-compliant septic tanks, from percolation testing and design through excavation, installation and building regulations sign-off. Serving Oswestry and the surrounding villages, including Whittington, Gobowen, St Martin’s, Trefonen.

Call 01743 562954 Describe your problem

Photo: Peter Broster · CC BY 2.0

Septic tanks do not last forever. Older brick or concrete tanks crack and leak, single-skin steel tanks corrode, and many older installations no longer meet the rules that now apply to off-mains drainage. When a tank fails, or a survey flags it during a house sale, replacement is usually the right answer.

Tank replacement around Oswestry has to respect two very different grounds. On the plain villages — Whittington, Gobowen, St Martin’s — glacial clay makes percolation marginal and drainage fields large. In the uplands the soil thins to stone over rock, and depth to bedrock, slope and spring lines decide the design more than the percolation rate does. Border properties still running a brick tank piped to a ditch, once standard practice here, now need replacing with an arrangement the rules recognise.

Off-mains drainage is everywhere in the Oswestry hinterland. The upland villages west of the town were never economical to sewer, and even larger settlements have unsewered edges. Border properties often date from an era when a brick-built tank and a pipe to the nearest ditch was standard practice, an arrangement the 2020 rules now require owners to change.

How septic tank installation and replacement works, in full →

Ground conditions around Oswestry

Ground splits with the landscape. The plain east of town carries glacial clays where percolation is often poor and drainage fields need generous sizing, while the uplands to the west bring shallow, stony soils over rock, steep falls, and spring lines that can put water exactly where you do not want it.

Watercourses and the rules around Oswestry

The area drains towards the Severn and the Vyrnwy, through a mesh of upland streams and field ditches. Watercourse proximity is the norm rather than the exception around Oswestry, which makes the General Binding Rules a live issue for a great many tanks in these hills.

Buying or selling around Oswestry

The market here runs from stone upland farmhouses to village semis and smallholdings, with plenty of buyers coming over the border or out from Chester and Wrexham. Rural sales around Oswestry now routinely stall on drainage questions, and sorting the system before listing has become sensible practice.

What the service includes

Site assessment and percolation testing to BS 6297
Honest advice on whether a septic tank or a treatment plant is the right fit for your ground
Supply and installation of modern tanks certified to EN 12566
Excavation, concrete backfill where required, and reinstatement of the site
Decommissioning and safe removal or infilling of the old tank
Building regulations liaison and completion paperwork

Around Oswestry

As well as Oswestry itself, the surrounding villages and farms are covered, including Whittington, Gobowen, St Martin’s, Trefonen, Pant, Llanymynech, Kinnerley, Ruyton-XI-Towns, Weston Rhyn. If you are somewhere smaller or somewhere between, get in touch anyway.