A Smell in the Garden
Is it better to buy a house in Queensland or South Australia?
Queensland obviously, but read on, and remember buyer beware.
Imagine you are building your dream.
You have saved up the deposit for your acreage property, researched the area, settled on the perfect home, plenty of space for you, and the kids and the dogs, the cows, the lamas, the van and the boat.
You move in, fill all the nooks and crannies with all your things that transform a house into a home.
And then it rains, not a flood, but it has been so dry recently and you need the rain to fill up your tanks, the rain is more than welcome.
But a couple of days later you smell that smell. It’s the smell of the drains not working, the smell of the toilet when there shouldn’t be a smell!
One of your youngest complains about the wet patch outside their bedroom window, just where they want to build their den?
And there is no escaping the smell, or the soggy wet puddle, or the implication that the septic system doesn’t work. And now you need to get the shovel out and start proving you are the man of the house and you can fix any problem affecting your property.
But you can’t, and once you’re covered in something you’d rather not think about, and despite having 3 showers you can still smell the smell. You ring the pump out man.
And he is great, he empties the tank no problem, and regales you with some of the tales he has seen and heard over the years. And he explains that he has been coming to this property every couple of months for years pumping the tank out. The trenches are blocked, they are over that way somewhere, the concrete wall of the septic tank has been dissolved by the acids in the tank and now every time it rains the tank fills and seeps out into the ground around it, changing that lovely green patch into a horrible smelly quagmire.
But don’t worry, he will be back in another couple of months to pump the tank again, and if you have any problems just give him a call.
And that is when you start asking questions:-
Why is this happening?
How much is this going to cost me every year?
Why did no one tell us before we bought the property?
How do we fix the problem?
How much is it going to cost?
When you’ve just mortgaged everything for this piece of paradise, the last question can hurt the most.
As a rule of thumb, any rural or semi-rural property built in Australia has a septic system, and a lot of properties now enclosed in the urban sprawl of our capital cities were once rural and still rely on septic systems.
All of the above happens in Queensland but not in South Australia, and it is happening more and more frequently across Queensland as the housing stock gets older.
So what is different in SA?
It’s a small addition to the Building and Pest Report required at the point of sale, called an Environmental section.
In the same way that Queensland has added the swimming pool fence requirement into the contract of sale, SA added an environmental clause. So any property has to have an assessment of the septic tank or on-site system carried out. And the result is the same, if the system needs repairing or doesn’t work, you can negotiate the costs of those repairs at the contract stage (or the seller can make good before the sale).
Either way, there is no nasty surprise at the bottom of the garden waiting for the new owner!
Caveat Emptor
©Adam Prescott, June 2017
The author was a manufacturer of both septic tanks and treatment plants for non-sewered locations.
Queensland obviously, but read on, and remember buyer beware.
Imagine you are building your dream.
You have saved up the deposit for your acreage property, researched the area, settled on the perfect home, plenty of space for you, and the kids and the dogs, the cows, the lamas, the van and the boat.
You move in, fill all the nooks and crannies with all your things that transform a house into a home.
And then it rains, not a flood, but it has been so dry recently and you need the rain to fill up your tanks, the rain is more than welcome.
But a couple of days later you smell that smell. It’s the smell of the drains not working, the smell of the toilet when there shouldn’t be a smell!
One of your youngest complains about the wet patch outside their bedroom window, just where they want to build their den?
And there is no escaping the smell, or the soggy wet puddle, or the implication that the septic system doesn’t work. And now you need to get the shovel out and start proving you are the man of the house and you can fix any problem affecting your property.
But you can’t, and once you’re covered in something you’d rather not think about, and despite having 3 showers you can still smell the smell. You ring the pump out man.
And he is great, he empties the tank no problem, and regales you with some of the tales he has seen and heard over the years. And he explains that he has been coming to this property every couple of months for years pumping the tank out. The trenches are blocked, they are over that way somewhere, the concrete wall of the septic tank has been dissolved by the acids in the tank and now every time it rains the tank fills and seeps out into the ground around it, changing that lovely green patch into a horrible smelly quagmire.
But don’t worry, he will be back in another couple of months to pump the tank again, and if you have any problems just give him a call.
And that is when you start asking questions:-
Why is this happening?
How much is this going to cost me every year?
Why did no one tell us before we bought the property?
How do we fix the problem?
How much is it going to cost?
When you’ve just mortgaged everything for this piece of paradise, the last question can hurt the most.
As a rule of thumb, any rural or semi-rural property built in Australia has a septic system, and a lot of properties now enclosed in the urban sprawl of our capital cities were once rural and still rely on septic systems.
All of the above happens in Queensland but not in South Australia, and it is happening more and more frequently across Queensland as the housing stock gets older.
So what is different in SA?
It’s a small addition to the Building and Pest Report required at the point of sale, called an Environmental section.
In the same way that Queensland has added the swimming pool fence requirement into the contract of sale, SA added an environmental clause. So any property has to have an assessment of the septic tank or on-site system carried out. And the result is the same, if the system needs repairing or doesn’t work, you can negotiate the costs of those repairs at the contract stage (or the seller can make good before the sale).
Either way, there is no nasty surprise at the bottom of the garden waiting for the new owner!
Caveat Emptor
©Adam Prescott, June 2017
The author was a manufacturer of both septic tanks and treatment plants for non-sewered locations.
