#  >  > Living And Legal Affairs In Thailand >  >  > Construction in Thailand >  >  > Building in Thailand Famous Threads >  >  Building your own cesspit in Thailand

## dirtydog

Building Your Own Soakaway Cesspit:

These quite obviously are quite important, if you aint got one of these it means haveing a shite out in the garden, this can sometimes be embarrassing, ie if you have guests round for your birthday BBQ or some such thing.

Anyway this is something any DIYer can do, first up you need to dig a big hole, the bigger the better.

Most lowend housing and shophouses can contain just under a cubic meter of shite and piss, now don't forget all that water that goes down the toilet everytime you flush it, so most times these cess pits fill up pretty quick, yep you have to get the suction people in every now and again to suck out your tank, hell here in Pattaya it's only 300baht per suck, but, do you want that every week?

Nope, of course you don't, so nows the time for you all to build proper cess pits.

OK, First off dig a big hole, now dig it a bit bigger, if your a family of obese people then keep on digging, yep you lot that eat and shite too much and need loads of cesspits, so keep on digging, one, you will have the benifit of actually exercising and two you wont need them emptied so much.

Anyway once you believe your cesspits are big enough for your household it is time to go out and buy some concrete rings, now these are less than 200baht each so buy loads of them and if you can't use them all then dig some more dirt out.

Chuck the concrete rings in the massive great big hole, stick 4 inch pipe joiners between all the piles of rings at top and bottom, this way will deal with floaters and sinkers, fill up the inbetween of all the rings with stone for some stability, you also need a breather pipe preferably above head height so you don't have to enjoy the aromas from your cesspit, the breather pipe just stick a t piece on top of it.

These rings you can buy covers for, 1 cover comes with a hole so you can access your cesspit and the other without, you have to decide how you need to access your own cess pit.

On this one we used the covers for the rings and built a square access point which is obviously covered as they don't smell to nice, we then done a concrete pour to make it all nice and strong so the garden didn't cave in when someone walked across it, I mean you really don't want to fall into that shite, do you?

On top of this you chuck your soil and then make a nice garden.

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## dirtydog

Now I have to admit the above pictures were from a Palace as oppposed to your normal scumbag home, but hell that is irrelevant, the next thing you got to do is get your cesspit bubbling away as you would expect your illegal beer to be bubbling away, yep something has to eat all that poo.

Now I have heard stories of chucking a large dead animal into your cesspit to get it all started, now there aint nothing wrong with that apart from you got to run it over and then take it home with you.

The easiest way of course is to flush some yeast down your toilets once per week, this gets the old poo eaten  :Smile:

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## Smeg

Is that a pipe or a small one legged flipflop wearer doing a handstand in the top pic?

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## DrAndy

what!! Smeg has an interest in building in Thailand?

nexthting we know, he will be asking questions about how big a stable is needed for buffaloes

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## Smeg

^ Luckily I don't base my decisions on which threads to read purely on following particular other members around the forum  :Wink:

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## friscofrankie

Got any tips for settin' up a nice big drain field and siphon set up? On the Islands we never had to manually empty our pits because we had setup real good drain fileds and siphons. 
Well, there was this one.  Fuckin' Fijians hated having to dig it out.  always wanted milk becuase it fought the poisons.  :Very Happy:

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## BillyZ

> Now I have heard stories of chucking a large dead animal into your cesspit to get it all started, now there aint nothing wrong with that apart from you got to run it over and then take it home with you.


Seems like this wouldn't be a problem in Pattaya. Instead of hitting the brakes next time, just hit the gas. One dead dog/cat/crazy motorcycle driver and *BOOM*, instand bubbles in your Shit Pit. 




> The easiest way of course is to flush some yeast down your toilets once per week, this gets the old poo eaten


I have bought some bacteria from Home Pro that seems to do that trick, though, it is on the higher end of the price scale. You can buy some cheap(er) stuff from the local Mom & Pop stores and it's supposed to work pretty well. I guess you'd call it 'bacteria tong kee'. 

We've got it set up so that the over flow goes into another sump tank that's mixed with the 'gray water'. And what doesn't get recycled there to water the lawn with, flows into the local klong. It's a pretty good set up, actually.

Here's a question for ya....how do you know when it's time to call the sucker truck? We've got 2 of those black plastic tanks and one of them looks kind of full, but the bubbling is still going on and the flow of water down the toilet is still pretty good.

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## dirtydog

When you have problems flushing the toilet is the time  :Smile:

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## dirtydog

I should add that this is actually the secondary cess pit.

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## Airportwo

I have been told about this before and have looked in Homepro, what's it called? and where is it? If you don't mind sharing this info Sir?
I couldn't find anything, not a small store to look around!




> I have bought some bacteria from Home Pro that seems to do that trick, though, it is on the higher end of the price scale. You can buy some cheap(er) stuff from the local Mom & Pop stores and it's supposed to work pretty well. I guess you'd call it 'bacteria tong kee'.

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## BillyZ

I don't have the name of the stuff with me. But it comes in a light blue can. It's marketed as bacteria for RV tanks. 

If you walk into the Carre Four Home Pro in Pattaya, go to the right side and walk about half way down. It's on one of those isles about half way down on the right hand side. 

I think they sell it with the car wash stuff. When I get home later on, I'll take a picture of the can and post it. 

When you buy it, don't flush too much down at one time. The stuff is hard to get down the drain! But it really gets stuff moving in the tank!

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## hillbilly

I have often wondered. What kind of wrench does it take to open up the cess pool?

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## Airportwo

> I have often wondered. What kind of wrench does it take to open up the cess pool?


Air Chisel would have few problems here?

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## dirtydog

Heres the bacteria you need to break down the poo in the cess pit, available in a local hardware store near you for less than 100baht per bottle.












> What kind of wrench does it take to open up the cess pool?


Never seen the wrench for these, we just use a hammer and screw driver.

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## Itchy

One consideration is to place the cespit at least 50 meters from any wells. I'd be a bit concerned about the water table being so low and would, under wet ground conditions, place the cesspit in its own concrete tank, so as to contain leaks.

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## Jerrys

OMG...now I know how it's done!

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## BillyZ

I never did find the can of stuff I got from Home Pro. My wife, in one of her massive cleaning fits, felt that it was something that needed to be thrown away.

I've since bought some stuff similar to what DD has shown above. I think mine was something like 65 bath a bottle. And that was good for one tank. The place that sells it in Sattahip (331, near 332) also sells animal feed.

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## Itchy

One thing to be careful of is not to use too much detergent, especially bleach to clean your toilets if you are using a septic tank.

Too much detergent, and especially bleach, can kill off the bacteria in the tank and leve you with stagnating sewage rather than decomposing sewage.

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## BillyZ

Our soapy water (from mainly from the washing machine) goes directly into the grey water line. We've got it going to a pit that we use to water half of the lawn. The other 330 square meters we water with the city water. We've got really green grass   :Very Happy:

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## Itchy

I think watering the lawn with washing machine water is a good idea, the soaps used in washing contain Phosphates which the grass thrives on.

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## BillyZ

^Yeah, that's why we do it. I'm not so sure that it's as good for the regular plants. And it doesn't seem to be good water for the compost. But the grass is thriving.

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## dirtydog

Professional Cess Pits in Thailand are these pictured below, you stick your toilet waste in one end, then the outlet which is slightly lower is connected to the road drainage, and you always wondered why the drains smelt so bad here  :Smile:

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## lom

> Professional Cess Pits in Thailand are these pictured below, you stick your toilet waste in one end, then the outlet which is slightly lower is connected to the road drainage, and you always wondered why the drains smelt so bad here


Nah, that's not the proper way to do it.
I'm building two rental bungalows on my land at the moment and am using such an  "american" tank (2500 L).
The outlet goes to another cesspit, 8 meter deep made with cement rings.
That cesspit also get the water from the shower, and from the kitchen via a fat filter.

The principle of the plastic tank is that it should be filled all the the time
to withstand the pressure from the soil around it.
Shit entering it will fall down to the bottom and cause shitty water to
overflow into the other cesspit.

When the plastic tank is full of mud/shit, then it's time to call  for the car
to come and suck it up.  
Afterwards, the tank should immediately be filled up with water again.

Now, just in case if the cement ring cesspit should fill up with water (shouldn't really happen), I've made an outlet from it going to the road drain   :Wink:

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## dirtydog

All the ones I have seen are connected straight to the road drainage, no secondary soakaway tank is used, the last 2 housing estates I have worked on the contractors connected straight to the road drainage  :Sad: 

We only do soakaways as I never could understand how these things could work hygenically if they were connected straight to road drains.

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## man with no head

Man, that's gotta be nasty. Why bother using the primary tank if you're just going to run the outlet to the nearest body of water?

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## Spin

> All the ones I have seen are connected straight to the road drainage


Main street in Chaweng is the living stinking proof that this is 100% true

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## BillyZ

> Man, that's gotta be nasty. Why bother using the primary tank if you're just going to run the outlet to the nearest body of water?


Well, the idea is that whilst the shit is in the tank, it's being broken down by microbes. Not that it smells any better that the fresh shit, but it should break down in the sewer that much faster if it's been through the bacteria.

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## man with no head

That's the theory, but, you need heat (and time) to destroy the pathogens. If you don't have heat then you need more time to kill them, and, if it flows too easily into the nearest khlong it likely isn't going to be sanitary.

Smell is one thing. Even water that's been through tertiary treatment still smells like rotten eggs. But at least it's safe.

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## dirtydog

This picture shows the inner workings of a cess pit. Not sure if the mesh is to keep turds in or rats out.

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## dirtydog

Delving deeper into a finished thai cesspit we find this, little round plastic things.

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## Dougal

There is a lot of information on septic tanks on the internet - just a different type of shit I suppose.

Here's one for starters.

SEPTIC TANKS

And another

How Septic Systems Have Evolved

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## man with no head

Maybe the plastic things are to increase the surface area for bacteria to grow on?

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## Rigger

you guys seam to know alot about shit. All I know is I have 4 cement tanks down the side of my house and the lids make a funny noise when I walk down the side of the house to get another beer

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## Dougal

> Maybe the plastic things are to increase the surface area for bacteria to grow on?


I think they are to break up the solids on their way into the tank.

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## dirtydog

Chuck a bucket of Somtam down the toilet once perweek, that stuff seems to be very good at breaking up solids in the human body  :Smile:

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## man with no head

^LMAO, how true.

That and mystery meatballs from the typical sidewalk vendor  :Puke: 

There's some damn good som tom in the food court in Platinum Fashion Mall.

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## Marmite the Dog

I turned the downstairs tap on for the first time in my new place at the weekend. I was rewarded with a nice rotten eggs type of smell. I trust this is not a permanent feature of my cesspit?

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## Thetyim

> I trust this is not a permanent feature of my cesspit?


Yes it is.
The water in Ayuthaya is high in HydroTetraphosperine Sulphates

This re-acts with the plastic water pipes and makes that awful smell
Everyone  living there complains about it, didn't you know ?

I had to cut short my holiday there because it gave me sinus problems.

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## man with no head

Perhaps the sulfur is coming from bacteria in the water lines.

Maybe someone took a dump while hooking up the water main?

Hydrotetraphosphorus sulfates can be quite nasty.

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## Gerbil

> I turned the downstairs tap on for the first time in my new place at the weekend. I was rewarded with a nice rotten eggs type of smell. I trust this is not a permanent feature of my cesspit?


Well, if you've got your plumbing set up so that you have your taps in the house being fed *from* the cesspit, then I'd say yes.  :Smile:

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## Marmite the Dog

I do hope you guys are just joshing!

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## Thetyim

My understanding of it is that these sulphates are heavier than water and so will always collect at the lowest point.
Any one know if this is true ?

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## man with no head

Last year near where I live 2 lower floor apartment blocks became uninhabitable due to sulfates collecting in the pipes due to settling (the upstairs ones were OK).. our water source is near Mt. Hood which is a volcano, after all....

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## Skeets

This is a shity topic, but it has caught my attention. The question I have is it important to glue or cement each ring together to prevent ground water from seaping into the cesspit? I would think so, but haven't seen it mentioned. Also, it was mentioned that stones should be added around the rings, is that really necessary?

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## dirtydog

The cement ring type cess pit is for use as a soakaway, ie you want the water table to be lower than the cess pit, the reason we put stones between the rings was so we could concrete over the whole thing and build a garden on top of it.

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## Dougal

DD I suspect that Skeets needs a bit more info.

i.e. there are two types of hole for getting waste from your house. One for bath, shower and sink stuff (grey water) and a different design for shit (black water).

The type that consists of a stack of concrete rings with a surround of stones should only be used for grey water.

If you are considering doing this at your house Skeets, then look some of the more exhaustive information on the internet first.

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## DrAndy

I think we have mentioned this before somewhere

There are some terminology problems, as well. A cesspit is a big tank that gets filled with shit and associated water. When full, you have to have it pumped out. When I lived in Nigeria, we had one outside our office and they actually drained it manually with buckets. One guy even got into it near the end and passed up the buckets....it stank in the office, never mind outside.

A septic tank is what we are talking about here, I think. This is a tank, as pictured by DD, which has concentric rings inside, through which the shit gradually passes, being broken down as it does. 

The concentric rings just make the journey as long as possible, giving the bacteria lots of time to work properly. The concentric ring design therefore lets you have a septic tank in a small a hole as possible.

When the shit eventually reaches the outlet, it should have been broken down to just a liquid. The bacteria should have eaten all the solids and a lot of the nutrients in the water. This liquid should be relatively smell free, and fairly safe hygenically.

This liquid should then go to a soakaway, along with the other household water (like shower and kitchen water), and slowly soak into the ground.

The septic tank should never need opening or draining out if the bacteria are working well. They are usually happy as long as you dont use strong chemicals to clean the toilet. 

The soakaway does not depend on bacterial action, so you can use bleach etc to clean the kitchen sink.

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## corvettelover

when you have your tank pumped out or install a new one fill with water and through in a handfull of lime this will make a healthy enviroment for the bacteria to live in. We also use to use absorbition trenches the liquid outlet goes into a trench with plastic pipe with holes drilled into it the bottom of the trench is filled with gravel (blue metal) and covered with same and then topped up with soil. 
Then plant some nice water loving trees or shrubs around pit.
Ensure you mesh the outlet pipe to stop the solids getting out otherwise your absorbition pipe will become blocked and your septic tank will over flow.
When installing tank think about putting a plastic tube down the full length and inserting a copper rod inside it  and mark a level on it that is below the top of the tank,then put a screw cap on top of pipe so you can dip test the level of your tank without having to pull the inspection cover off. dont stink as much.

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## Dougal

If you buy a plastic tank it will be constructed with a couple of chambers, and some bits of plastic designed to break up the solids as they flow in. The tank should always be full of liquid as it is only the overflow which has been broken down by the bacteria in the tank which is supposed to flow away to the leach field.

A systen that is working effectively should only need emptying when the broken down solids reach such a level in the tank to inhibit correct operation.

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## blackgang

Dougal said it, and they do make and sell a septic tank made in black plastic that has two chambers and they sell bacteria culture to use in the thing, and you do run leach lines from it into a drain field as Corvette said, works well especially if above the high water mark during monsoon so it doesn't flood. 
They sell them at HOME MART here in Phetchabun. or you can get plans off the net under septic tanks and build one out of concrete, it will be a 2 cell tank..

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## farmerfloyd

I have a 1000 gallon tank with a divider inside to keep solids apart and then it runs into leach field to 4 or 5 lines 60 feet long with gravel on top with angels hair on top of gravel that lets more water to evaporate then stays in pipe to soak in ground, it is 13 years old, pumped once this year, was like perfect, did not need pumping, bugs working overtime,But no soap from washer goes into septic tank, seperate. in Florida with high water table but sand so settles fast. NO smell, just 2 adults no diapers. ha farmerfloyd

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## robd

ok then, i am just about to start building in middle of nowwhere so need a cesspit/soak away, i want to use grey water for plants/trees etc but land is sloped down t oa natural water course which i dont want t opollute.
Have enough land but need t oknow size etc of cesspit, any ideas for family of 4? how many rings high,how many in line and what diam etc and then does grey water need a tank as well?? how big an area do you need for soak away? any help will be great cheers rob

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## dirtydog

I think you need to work out how much water you will be using perday, ie baths jacuzzis or showers etc, and also soil density and water table height.

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## tsicar

i did my own cesspit when i built my house, roughly to the spec. that dd has given. worked well for around two years, then.......
the night i was due to leave for bankok to collect my daughter at the airport (her first visit to thailand), disaster struck! shit smell and upon investigating, found the bloody thing had decided to back up and overflow. no chance to get it sucked out in time, so spent a few hours digging a 3 cubic metre hole and diverting the toilet pipe to it. due to leave in three hours, no time to concrete or close it up properly, so i covered it up with a couple sheets of that asbestos fibreboard and shovelled some soil around the edges. well, my daughter's visit went well, and so did the new cesspit, and since it was working, and in an area nobody ever ventured into, it kind of got forgotten about, and the boards got covered with a layer of dried bamboo leaves.
a few months later, i had to leave thailand because of the visa rule change, house boarded up , and not a thought about the cesspit. 
i have a friend in the village (he posts on this forum), checking the place over from time to time, and a while ago he reported discovering a man-sized hole in the fibreboard where somebody had fallen in! he sed he did not bother to investigate further, since he was afraid of what he would find! shit surprise for some thai snooping on my property. if he is still in there, at least i will not have to source a dead animal to get the bacteria going!

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## robd

ok dd so how does one go about working this out without getting to technical,surely lots of you have done this sort of thing already so just an idea would be great!

and how big do you think i should go for for the black water cesspit??

thanks rob

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## DrAndy

as a rule of thumb, it would be good enough for 4/5 people to use three of those concrete 1 metre rings for the tanks in the ground, stacked on top of each other and stuck in a hole like this




you would make on septic tank (not cesspit) for the shit, and another one for the grey water. The shit water would overflow into the second grey water tank after processing.  You may then have a third tank for it to overflow into and from this, percolate into the surrounding earth. It should not pollute anything by then as the bacteria would have cleaned it up.

If you wanted to use the water for your plants, then the third tank could be made waterproof and you could pump it out rather than letting it filter out

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## robd

ok all so septic tank, they can be done using same concrete rings??? or am i looking at buying1 of teh plastic ones? thanks
rob

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## blackgang

Buy one of the 2 chamber plastic septic tanks, that way there is a digesting chamber, and a runoff chamber and have them put in a leach field with a couple of leach lines with 4" perf pipe set in gravel and then covered over, they should be as long as you have room to make them.

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## DrAndy

yes you can use the all-in-one plastic tanks, but it works out more expensive. neater though

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## sunderlandstephen

Did you consider wrapping pond liner around rings before concreting

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## Deris

I found a few good sites on building a septic system for those still interested:
How to Construct a Small Septic System - wikiHow

and-

http://www.thenaturalhome.com/septicdesign.pdf

Hope you find these helpful.

With these 2 links you should be able to avoid the Sh!t Storm. 
 ::spin::

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