Speaking of septic tanks
Many years ago, the Achtungmeinfield family lived out in the sticks, and the house we lived in came equipped with a septic tank. Twas a very old septic tank, with a brick lining. For the first year, we had to have the bloody thing emptied about once every 6 months, for reasons my father could not understand. Yes, he had three vigorous sons who ate him out of house and home, but still. That's an awful lot of shite. Now we lived about halfway down a hill, and there were about a dozen houses uphill of our gaff. And they never seemed to have the problem we did.

Right until we happened to dig up, divine the purpose of, and subsequently block with concrete, the seemingly communal pipe that linked the overflow from all their septic tanks to ours. Before long, if the wind was right, the stink of badly backed-up septic tanks was all too apparent, and some of our neighbours had started to take on increasingly haggard expressions. Word was there had been some unpleasantness, stuff like flushing the bog causing all manner of effluent to boil up out of the kitchen sink plug. As concerned neighbours, we were only too delighted to give them the number of a nice firm who would empty out their bastarding motherfucking freeloading septic tanks for them.

As for our tank - one day, Dad's tame builder and his oppo were peering into the manhole cover over the old tank, poking inside with a long pole to check the integrity of the brickwork. Much sucking of teeth, "Looks like you'll need a new one, amateur put this one in, happy to quote you, gonna be a few quid mind, etc". Right then, the wall they'd been prodding collapsed, causing a wave of the most heinous pong to well up out of the manhole cover, right into their faces. I was standing a good way off, so it might have been the distance, but it didn't half look like the builder puked up not only the contents of his stomach, but his entire gastric tract.
(Achtungmeinfield, Wed 22 Jan 2014, 21:44, 1 reply)

That's odd - had the premises formerly been sewered and the pipe was left in without thinking about it, or had some rascally neighbour burrowed in with a pipe while the property was empty?
(Carpe Cyprinidae, Thu 23 Jan 2014, 11:30, closed)