Septic setup costs

[Scooterscum]

We are playing with the idea of buying acreage and starting of with a caravan then doing the shed thing, before building a house.
Can anybody give me a (very!) rough idea on what it costs to have a septic tank and associated soakage trenches set up?
We are looking in the Kuranda area (I want to live in paradise near Journeyman Mick :D )
Also any idea on the costs of running power onto the property. (The property has underground power/phone running along front boundary)
I know there are no definate answers but some ideas from people who have dealt with this sort of thing before would be great.
Thanks and regards
Simon

[Iain]

Ours cost about $15K 4 years ago, a sewerage treatment plant costs more but not sure how much.
Can you still use septic, some councils have banned them now and you may need a treatment plant instead.

[Grunt]

My advice is to get a sewage treatment plant of some sort. Something like the Biolytix (http://www.biolytix.com/index.php) sytem. These aren't particularly cheap but are much much better than a septic tank. The cost is somewhere between $3,500 and $6,500.

As for power, it depends on many factors. How far do you have to run the power to the house? Is there a transformer near by with sufficient capacity to include your house? You can expect to pay anywhere from $3000 to $25,000 and more. You really need to get a quote from your electicity provider. If it is towards the upper end of the price bracket, you might be better off going off-grid solar with a diesel generator backup.

[Wood Butcher]

Maybe a dum suggestion but try calling a few local plumbers regarding the cost of installing a waste water system and the local power authority to see how much to hook up power!

[Big Shed]

We went through this execercise about 6 years ago, we live on 25 acres in Central Victoria.
We went for a Septech septic treatment plant and have never regretted going for this solution rather than the traditional smelly septic trenches.
The treated water gets used for the garden and there are no smells.
Total cost was around $5000, not that much higher than a conventional septic. There are a number of these treatment plants on the market, we went for the Septech because it uses concrete tanks rather than plastic.

As for electricity connection, how long is a piece of string? Distance, single phase or three phase, carrying capacity of the cables etc etc.
Our connection from the boundary, 200m, to the shed cost us $5000 and that included the meter box etc. We lived in the shed for 12 months whilst we built the house, the we connected the electricity to a sub-board in the house.

Hope you enjoy your "tree-change".

[silentC]

We put in a SuperTreat. It uses plastic tanks (recycled). We went for that one because the old man services them and we got it at cost price. Full retail is about $7,000 I think. Plus whatever it costs you to get the trench dug.

Main benefit of one of these over a basic septic tank is that the water can be reused. We use ours to flush the loos, saving god knows how many litres of water per day. The remainder goes on the gardens.

The Biolytix suggested by Grunt was on the New Inventors. It uses worms to breakdown the solid waste. It only has one plastic tank, whereas the majority of on site sewerage systems have two. The maintenance on a Biolytix consists of someone coming out once a year to empty out the worm castings. I think they are around the 7k mark too. They have an option to run on a solar panel. If I was doing it again now, I would put in one of them.

[DavidG]

A worm farm (http://www.wormfarm.com.au/index.php) type will cost 10k'ish and does not require any power.

[Scooterscum]

Thanks for all the helpful replies. Thats exactly what I needed to know ie ball park figures for what people have had experience with doing themselves.
BTW Wood Butcher - I had already contacted local companies but no-one will give me any rough idea with out seeing the property (which is understandable) and there would be a five to six week wait for that to happen! (sorry I should have mentioned that in my original question:) )
Thanks again for everybodys help
Regards Simon

[silentC]

A worm farm (http://www.wormfarm.com.au/index.php) type will cost 10k'ish and does not require any power.
If you're on a hilly site, they will drain through gravity but if you are not, then you need a small pump.

Those systems are great and I like the fact that you can also put food scraps and newspapers etc in them. Not sure whether they are suited to reusing the water the way you can with a two tank system though. The liquid waste just runs out as it builds up, whereas with a two tank system, it is stored in a pump out drum intil it gets to a certain level, then you can pump it out. We have a third tank where we store the contents of the pump out drum, which can fill up several times a day, and the water for the toilets is taken from it as required, via a pressure pump. The garden sprinklers are run by a pump on a float switch.

I suppose you could store the output from the worm farm system but I'm not sure if it's suitable for above ground irrigation.

I'd give them a high rating for energy conservation but a low rating for water saving and when you're on tank water, that becomes very important, even more so than the power bill.

[DavidG]

silentC
Agree totally.
The water is NOT suitable for above ground use.
Needs a sloping block to drain.

Forgot that with the Murrumbidge river (http://www.pdg.au.ms/) bounding the block, water is not a problem.

[Iain]

Wish our river was like that, at the moment if I peed (sp) in it the flow would double:(

[journeyman Mick]

Simon,
if/when you find a block give me a hoy (send a PM) if you want any local info (flooding/fire risk/lunatic gun toting neighbours:eek: ). Mareeba shire will still allow traditional septic systems provided an absorbtion test shows it's okay but the traditional trenches are out, new laws just came in requiring huge expensive soakage pits which pretty much force you (price-wise) to use a tertiary treatment system. Just pricing replacement trenches for my place today (got a mate who runs an excavator and bobcat) and that little exarcise is going to cost near $2K. Power hookup cost depends mostly on how far it is from your proposed shed & house site (note the order I put them in ;) :D ) and the nearest power pole.

Mick