Adjusting to life on a septic tank

Life on a septic tank means that we have had to adjust some of the products we use in the house. As a septic tank is filled with bacteria, we can’t use to same cleaning products that we have used in the past as they will damage the bacteria and do more harm than good.

The main ingredient you need to be conscious of is phosphorus.

Most products will have a “septic friendly” or “greywater friendly” stamp on their labels, which is super handy when you’re at the shops.

We’ve switched over to using Earth Choice products. They have a great range of items, and they are available at both Coles and Woolworths.

HANDY TIP
Definitely check out the products online before purchasing. We’ve found a significant difference in price between Woolworths and Coles for the Laundry Liquid.

For toilets, we’ve picked up some Earth Choice Cream Cleanser because you can’t use regular toilet duck, etc. The Cream Cleanser works really well and helps to get rid of the typical stains you get from being on septic.

Another thing to keep an eye on is what handwashes you buy for your bathrooms. We made the mistake of buying “anti-bacterial” ones which we can’t use because they will damage the septic as well.

It’s all the little things that you don’t realise!

Settling in

It’s been a busy few weeks since moving in, trying to get settled prior to us hosting Christmas with my family on Boxing Day.

We’ve had to buy lots of little bits and pieces for the house like floor mats, bathmats, coasters, and other random things.

Below are a few photos of how things are looking now. Feeling very happy so far.

Guest Bedroom

Dining Room

Lounge Room looking towards deck

Lounge Room

Oh Telstra…

One of the things I have been not looking forward to doing as a part of our move is organising our Telstra connection.

I spent over two hours on the phone to them last weekend trying to organise our new connection. Two hours. That I’m never going to get back.

Because I was trying to transfer our existing broadband over to the new house, they told me that while our connection could take place on 22 December, our actual internet wouldn’t be connected until 29 December. I wasn’t having a bar of it, and asked how we could get it connected sooner, and they told me if I just organised for a new internet connection and cancelled the old one, it could be connected on the same day. *facepalm*

So that’s what we did.

4 days after speaking to them and locking in 22 December for our connection, I got text messages from Telstra saying our connection was scheduled for 4 January. I called them straight away and they couldn’t tell me why it was changed from 22 December, and after looking into it, they say that there was still availability on that date, so they changed it back. *facepalm*

The next fun part was the fact we didn’t have any cable running to the house, purely just the trenching. Lucky I have a husband and brother-in-law who are both work in telecommunications and were able to pull some strings and get us some cable connected in preparation for our Telstra appointment today.

So this morning, I went into work and then came home for the appointment time frame I was given – 10am to 2pm. I sat around doing work that I’d bought home with me and as it got closer to 2pm and no-one had arrived, I called Telstra to find out what was happening. They told me that I’d receive a call from a technician and that I should “wait around”.

At 2.30pm, the technician arrived and told me that he’d spend the next 3 hour or so working to get the connection working, including a trip back to the exchange to get the number set-up.

And he didn’t lie. The guy left at 5.30pm this afternoon, and here we are, with a phone and internet connected just in time for Christmas! Woohoo!

HANDY TIP
Don’t bother going into a Telstra shop to organise a connection, they’ll tell you it’s easier (and cheaper) to do it over the phone. Also, do it in advance if you can. Give them a call when you’re likely to have an idea of your handover date so you can try and have the connection ready and waiting for you!

What’s that sound?

Over the past few nights, we’ve noticed a bit of a gurgling sound in the floor waste of our ensuite. The sound was particularly noticeable after we’d shower each day.

We text our friend, Lurch, the plumber to see if he could shed any light on it for us. He said it was probably to do with our septic and ask our builder about it.

Luke said that we should check that the septic was on. So yesterday afternoon, Stephen checked the main switchboard and the power was on there. He then headed up to the septic tank and it wasn’t switched on there, so he flicked the switch to on, thinking that would do the trick.

Last night, the noise was still there so Stephen called Lurch and we discovered that there’s an actual power point inside the lid of the septic tank which wasn’t switched on. The minute Stephen turned it on, the septic started sounding an alarm and throwing an error which was to do with the water levels in the septic being too high.

The sprinklers went on in the backyard and the alarm went on for about 15-20 minutes (mind you, we were able to silence the sound and just had the light flashing on the top) before everything went back to normal.

Phew!

HANDY TIP
Check for different supplies of power on your septic tanks if you have one. And definitely have a read of the book to find out how it works and what the alarms, etc are.

We bought a ride-on!

So Stephen feels like he’s made it in life now because he (we) own a ride-on.

We borrowed our fridge Lurchy’s one and when we did, he mentioned he had a friend who was trying to sell their old one. So we went to take a look at it, and yes, it’s an old one and not in the most pristine condition, but it will do what we want it to… and it’s a quarter of the cost of a brand new one.

So we paid $700 and now we have a ride-on.

We had it delivered yesterday afternoon, so today Stephen spent the day tidying up the yard. He got through almost the entire yard before HE BROKE IT!! And by broke it, I mean he got a stick caught and one of the connections came loose, so now he needs to fix it before we can use it again. I’m so glad we didn’t buy a new one! haha.

TVing problems

On our first night here we plugged our TV in and when we did a tune, we found that we could only get ABC and Channel 10 Brisbane. We tried a few different things, but to no avail.

I spoke to our neighbours and they said that they only pick up Brisbane channels here, no local channels.

So Stephen organised for an antenna person to come out and found out that the antenna on our house was only for UHF, and because of our location, the only way it would work is if we extended the antenna up a few metres into the air (which would look mighty ugly). Our other option, and the most expensive option, was to have a new antenna installed – this time one for UHF and VHF. So, we went down this path. $490 later and we now have all channels.

Anyone want a UHF antenna? I’ve got a spare one going cheap!

A little fall of rain…

Or make that a big fall of rain. We are so lucky we got everything we wanted to over from Sue and Rick’s because it has been raining pretty consistently since Mum and Dad got here yesterday afternoon.

We were due to have our couch delivered this morning, but because it’d rained so much, we knew they wouldn’t be able to get up our driveway. In the end, the delivery guys dropped our couch off to Super Amart here in town and we need to organise for it to get delivered sometime this week.

Stephen and I made a mercy dash to the shops this morning to pick up some food for dinner and also to go and check out a ride-on mower. When we left, we slipped pretty badly down the driveway so we weren’t even sure if we’d get back up, but we did and now we’re hoping that the rain is going to stop so we can have things dry out again.

The dreaded move

Stephen and I have both taken some time off work to start moving in. Today’s plans were to get our beds over and most of our clothes and other bits of furniture we need.

We were expecting our gas to be connected today. We realised last night that there was nothing in place for our gas bottles to sit on so we made a mercy dash to Bunnings to purchase a cement slab to put the bottles on.

While we were out, we called by my work to pick up the gorgeous bunch of flowers my workmates had bought for us to celebrate moving into our house. They take pride of place on our table now.

Once we got back, we waited around for the plumber to come and put the tap in place for our fridge to be ready for our fridge to be delivered this afternoon.

And as it turned out, both our fridge and gas deliveries came at pretty much the same time.

While we waited around this morning, I started to unpack our boxes in the kitchen and started to make sense of things. We managed to get everything we wanted to done today, which made us very happy, and now we don’t have much left at Sue and Rick’s!

Tomorrow we’re planning to do more unpacking, and my parents are due to arrive in the afternoon to help us over the weekend. Our couch is due to be delivered Saturday morning, and then we can veg out in front of the TV. Can’t wait!

Our first night in the house

Well, our first night in the house was pretty uneventful. We had a really restless night’s sleep on the air mattress, and got woken up really early by the sun beaming in through the doors in the lounge room.

But it was so nice waking up to all the beautiful animal noises outside.

We found a few little things which we need Luke to fix up. In the main bathroom, only the heat lights were working, not the fan or the regular light. And in the oven, one of the trays has come un-welded so we need a new one. We also found that there was no tap put in place in the kitchen for us to plumb our fridge to once it arrives.

This morning, Lurchy and Lawson came out to visit to talk about our driveway. We’ve got a few ideas now and Lawson’s told us if we budget $1000 for the machinery, and then we’ll get a price for some recycled concrete to put down once the earthworks are done.

After they left, we waited around for Super Amart to arrive with our living and dining furniture (but not our couch). They had a bit of fun getting up our driveway, but they did it and then we spent the rest of the day putting it all together.

HANDY TIP
When putting together your furniture, buy a stack of felt stoppers to put on from the get-go to protect your flooring if you don’t have carpet.

Tonight we’re staying back at Sue and Rick’s and we’ll stay here until Thursday, when Stephen and I have the time off to move everything else over.

Professional Photos…

Our builder organised to take some professional photos of our house. He shared them on Facebook today, and I thought I’d share them here too. They look amazing!