Bolsover sits on the magnesian limestone ridge, and limestone changes how an off-mains system has to be designed. We work across the town and the Scarsdale villages around it.
We cover Bolsover, Clowne, Barlborough, Scarcliffe, Palterton, Glapwell and Shuttlewood for septic tank emptying, treatment plant servicing and repairs, installations and drain clearance. The yard is at Handley Wood, about twenty minutes west.
Bolsover stands on the magnesian limestone ridge that runs north to south through this part of Derbyshire, and that geology is the single biggest influence on drainage design in the area. Limestone can drain very freely — sometimes too freely. Where there are fissures, water can disappear quickly without being properly treated by the soil, and the Environment Agency takes a close interest in discharges to ground in that situation.
The practical effect is that a percolation test here can produce a result that looks excellent and still not support a conventional drainage field, because the question is not only how fast water goes but whether the ground actually treats it. On limestone sites we design conservatively, and in some cases the right answer is a treatment plant producing a cleaner effluent rather than relying on the ground to finish the job.
The ridge also drops steeply to the west into the Doe Lea valley, so a good number of properties around Carr Vale, Shuttlewood and Palterton have levels that need a pumping station rather than a straightforward gravity run.
The villages east and north of Bolsover — Shirebrook, Whitwell, Creswell, Clowne — are former pit villages, and the drainage reflects it. Mains sewerage reached the terraces but not always the farms, lodges and outlying properties, and there is a fair amount of made ground and unrecorded pipework from the industrial years. Where nobody knows what connects to what, we trace it with a camera before anyone quotes for anything.
Much of our Bolsover-area work is agricultural or on converted buildings: barns turned into houses, estate cottages, lodges and farmyards where the drainage grew piecemeal. Conversions in particular need their load looked at properly, because a system installed for one farmhouse is now serving three dwellings. Doing that calculation before the conversion is far cheaper than discovering it afterwards.
Places around Bolsover where we regularly work:
The Doe Lea and the Poulter both run through this area, along with a network of field drains and brooks. A septic tank discharging into any of them is the arrangement the General Binding Rules no longer allow, and around Bolsover it is common enough that we check it as a matter of course. If that is your situation the fix is either a treatment plant or a redirect to a drainage field — the rules explained here.
It can, significantly. Limestone may drain quickly through fissures without the soil treating the effluent, which is exactly what a drainage field is supposed to do. On those sites we often recommend a treatment plant instead.
Yes, and Whitwell, Creswell, Scarcliffe, Glapwell and the villages between them. It is a regular part of our round.
The system has to be sized for the property as converted, not as it was, and the work is notifiable under building regulations. Get the drainage designed as part of the project rather than at the end of it.
Yes. Farm yards, estate cottages, interceptors and the long unrecorded runs that come with them are routine work for us.
Twenty minutes from the yard, with our own tankers and camera kit.