"David Hansen" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 7 Jan 2007 21:38:12 -0000 someone who may be "xena"
wrote this:-

What about the discharge - can I put that into the ditch?

Not legally.

We have a septic tank system,

The typical septic tank can cope with a limited amount of clothes
washing chemicals, but not too much as that would kill off some of
the little things that do the work. It would be worthwhile doing
more research on how big your existing installation is and how it is
loaded.

I'll see if I can find out - it's something I've been wondering for a while,
but we share the tank with the farm next door (it's on his land) and both
properties have changed hands several times since the installation.

There may well be chemicals more suited to septic tanks too.

so not sure if our surface water goes into that,

Hopefully not. If it did it would reduce the capacity of the septic
tank and there is no reason to put surface water into a septic tank
anyway.

What comes out of a washing machine is not surface water.

or straight into the ditch.

Hopefully the surface water goes into something suitable for it,
which may be a ditch.

I always thought that there were two water systems in a house - grey water
(everything from inside) which goes for treatment, and surface water
(outside drains and roof gutter water etc) that went into a ditch or summat
without treatment.

Then I got confused, cos a few posts further down in "Washing machine waste
pipe across the kitchen", loads of people told the guy to stick his washing
machine outlet into the surface water drains. This is the only reason I was
asking about discharging into a ditch, I'd never do it otherwise, guv,
honest!

Ok, it's not too difficult to get it into the septic tank as there's a
manhole cover near the barn entrance that is en route to the septic tank.

Thanks to everyone for their comments and advice - I'm off to dig out the
manual and find out what pressure is required for the water, and how much
dirty water I'm going to have to cart around after!