Barnsley’s off-mains properties are out west towards Penistone and the Pennine edge, where the farms and cottages are on their own systems.
We cover Barnsley’s rural west — Penistone, Cawthorne, Silkstone, Thurlstone, Hoylandswaine, Ingbirchworth and High Hoyland — for septic tank emptying, treatment plant servicing and repairs, installations and drain clearance.
Barnsley town and the former pit villages around it are on mains drainage. The off-mains work begins once you go west: Cawthorne, Silkstone, Hoylandswaine, Thurlstone, Penistone and the scattered farms on the moor edge beyond them, up towards the Ingbirchworth and Langsett reservoirs.
It is gritstone country — millstone grit with thin soils on the higher ground and heavier clay in the valleys. Percolation varies sharply over short distances, which makes testing in the actual position of a proposed field important rather than nominal. A result from one side of a field can be useless for the other.
The western edge of this area sits in reservoir catchment — Ingbirchworth, Scout Dike, Langsett and the Don headwaters. Discharges in a public water catchment attract more scrutiny, and the separation distances from watercourses and supplies are the constraint that usually decides where a system can go, ahead of the percolation figure.
Where a watercourse discharge is the only option, the standard the plant achieves is the whole job. A unit that has lost air and is no longer treating properly has an immediate effect on water that someone downstream is relying on.
The building stock out here is farms, stone cottages and a growing number of conversions and holiday lets. The two recurring problems are familiar: systems serving more dwellings than they were sized for, and seasonal properties whose treatment plants sit idle for months and are then asked to cope with a full house every weekend.
Both are manageable with the right sizing and sensible timing on servicing. Neither is manageable by hoping.
Villages around Barnsley where we work:
Moor-edge properties are hardest to reach in the months when a failure is most likely. Getting the tank emptied and the plant serviced in autumn costs the same as doing it in January and removes the scenario where a tanker cannot get up the track at all. It is the single most useful piece of planning available on an exposed site.
Yes, along with Cawthorne, Silkstone, Hoylandswaine, Ingbirchworth and the farms beyond them.
It tightens the siting rules and raises the importance of discharge quality. The separation distances usually decide the design before the percolation result does.
Service the plant before the season rather than during it, size for peak occupancy, and never switch the plant off out of season.
Usually, with sensible timing. Tell us about the track when you book, and plan for autumn rather than mid-winter.
Penistone, the western villages and the moor edge — a regular part of our round.