Mansfield’s off-mains properties sit out in the old Sherwood country — the lodges, farms and converted buildings between the villages.
We cover Mansfield, Pleasley, Teversal, Skegby, Clipstone, Rainworth and Ravenshead for septic tank emptying, treatment plant servicing and repairs, installations and drain clearance. The yard is about half an hour west at Handley Wood, Chesterfield.
Mansfield sits on Sherwood sandstone, and that single fact separates the drainage here from the clay country twenty minutes west. Sandstone drains freely, so percolation results tend to be good and drainage fields can be smaller than on coal measures ground.
The complication is what lies beneath. The Sherwood sandstone is a major aquifer and a significant public water source, which makes groundwater protection a live issue across this area. Source protection zones are not visible from the surface, and where a property falls inside one the siting rules tighten considerably — sometimes to the point where a permit is needed rather than the general exemption.
We establish that at survey stage. Designing a field first and asking the question afterwards is the expensive order to do it in.
Mansfield, Mansfield Woodhouse and Sutton are on mains drainage. The off-mains work is further out: the Pleasley and Teversal lanes, the land around Clipstone and the forest edge, the properties scattered between Rainworth and Ravenshead, and the farms towards Blidworth and Farnsfield. A good number are converted — former colliery buildings, barns and lodges — which means systems carrying loads they were never designed for.
This was deep coal country, and as around Bolsover and Staveley the legacy is underground: made ground, culverted watercourses, industrial pipework and runs that appear on no plan. On any site where the drainage history is unknown, tracing with a camera before quoting saves everybody from a surprise mid-excavation.
Mansfield is an awkward patch for a tanker in a way that the open Derbyshire villages are not, and it is worth knowing before you book. The former colliery estates around Forest Town, Clipstone and Rainworth were laid out for pedestrians and the odd car, not for an eight-wheeler: long shared back entries, bollarded cut-throughs and parking on both sides of a street that was generously wide in 1925. Where the tank sits behind a terrace rather than in front of it, the job is a hose run rather than a drive-on, and that is the single biggest thing that changes the time on site.
Out towards Blidworth, Ravenshead and the Sherwood edge the problem reverses. Access is usually fine but the properties are scattered, the lanes are single-track with passing places, and several of the bigger houses have tanks sited well down a garden because the fall required it. We would rather know all of this on the phone than discover it on the day, so when you call, say roughly where the tank is and what we would be driving onto.
We answer the phone twenty-four hours a day, and Mansfield is well within reach of our base at Handley Wood outside Chesterfield. The calls we get most often from this side of the county are tanks surcharging after a wet week, blocked main runs on the older terraces, and treatment plant alarms where a blower has given up. What is urgent, what can wait until morning and what to do before we arrive is set out on our 24/7 emergency call-out page.
Places around Mansfield where we regularly work:
Two questions decide most installations around Mansfield: what the percolation test gives you, and whether the site sits in a groundwater source protection zone. The first is a day’s work; the second is a phone call. Both belong before you buy a tank, not after.
Yes, along with Rainworth, Clipstone, Farnsfield and the forest-edge properties between them.
Percolation is usually good, so fields can be smaller. The constraint is groundwater protection rather than drainage speed.
An area around a public water abstraction where discharges are more tightly controlled. Nothing on the surface shows it, so it has to be checked at design stage.
Usually made ground and unrecorded drainage. We trace it with a camera before anything is designed or quoted.
Usually, yes, but it is a hose run rather than a drive-on and it takes longer. Tell us roughly how far the tank is from the nearest point a lorry can stand and whether the back entry is shared, and we will send the right unit and give you a realistic price rather than a surprise.
Yes. We answer the phone twenty-four hours a day, every day, and Mansfield is a straightforward run from our base at Handley Wood. Out-of-hours work costs more than a booked visit and we will tell you that on the phone.
Half an hour from the yard, with our own tankers, jetting units and camera kit.