Whether you’re upgrading an old wastewater system or contemplating having a new sewage treatment plant installed, it’s important to understand the associated costs to protect yourself from any nasty surprises and to ensure you are given a fair price for the work carried out.
In this piece, we will cover the average cost of upgrading, installing a new system from scratch, what permissions you’ll need and more.
If you have any questions that aren’t covered here, please don’t hesitate to get in touch, we’d be happy to help.
In addition to fitting costs, there are other financial aspects to think about outside of the sewage tank installation. The price of the sewage treatment system and ongoing maintenance costs should be taken into consideration before you invest.
The quality of the ground you’re planning to use to store your treatment system, the precise model you opt for, your location, how long installation takes, whether an old system needs to be removed and whether you opt for a company that can carry out the entire process or one that needs to enlist the help of a third party will all factor into the overall costs.
While the below prices are estimations, our team can provide a much more accurate idea of costs once we’ve gathered some additional information from you.
As previously mentioned the exact cost will fluctuate depending on the size and materials of the plant, your location, ground conditions, whether there’s already infrastructure in place and more. With that said, a general rule of thumb would be:
Overall, the average cost of buying and installing a domestic sewage treatment plant is around £7,000-£13,000.
In some circumstances, you may be able to claim against your insurance’s accidental damage policy. If you believe you are replacing the system because of damage that has occurred, then it is worth checking your policy to see if you have accidental damage included.
That is a much more difficult question to answer, as one business may only need a treatment plant suited to 8PE (which is a unit designed for use by 8 people) to 200PE or more.
The best thing to do is to carry out a quick calculation to understand what size system you’ll likely need. The equation is as follows:
If your company holds more than fifty people, it may be better to get in touch to ensure the right sized commercial sewage tank installed for you.
Please bear in mind how many new employees you envision adding to your team over the years as this may impact the system size. Please feel free to get in touch for free advice from the Owls Hall team.
Sewage treatment plants can be operational for approximately 20 years if maintained well. When it comes time to upgrade, the company you choose to work with will have to desludge and remove your old tank before installing the new.
This makes it extremely challenging to specify how much this could cost, but it’s worth asking what the specific requirements would be to replace your system as a starting point and to ensure that each quote covers the same practicalities to avoid nasty surprises or unbalanced quotes.
If you are replacing an old system, you shouldn’t need planning permission, however, it’s worth double-checking what the regulations are with your local planning authority.
If you’re installing a new sewage treatment plant, you will need to obtain planning permission from your local authority (find yours using the Gov website), hold a permit and comply with UK building regulations.
You can find more information on the Government website.
Once again there are multiple factors at play that will impact the answer to this question.
If we take a domestic sewage treatment plant as an example, once you’ve paid all of the installation costs your running cost could be:
The company that installs your system will be able to specify whether your plant needs to be emptied once a year or every six months. That means that your yearly emptying costs could be £130-£260 a year.
The power supply linked to your system could cost £80-£180, the exact price will depend on the model you opted for.
Once again, the type of system you invested in will impact the exact cost, but it would be best to allocate £75-£375 each year for maintaining your new plant.
It’s incredibly difficult to say without a shadow of a doubt how much it will cost to run your system without gaining more information, however, on average, you can expect your yearly cost to vary between £285 and £815.
These are costs for a traditional system, costs for other sewage treatment plants will also vary:
We recommend being wary of any suppliers and manufacturers who state that their systems are the cheapest to run or maintain, especially if they haven’t gathered any of the additional information mentioned earlier in this piece.
Sewage treatment plants can make a big difference to buildings that need more support than the mains can offer and for families and brands that want to install a system that will help protect the environment. However, it’s important that you get the right system for your budget and requirements.
At Owls Hall, we’ve been installing and upgrading both residential and commercial properties for more than 50 years and work to incredibly high standards. If you’re interested in upgrading your existing system please explore our sewage treatment plants.
Alternatively, if you want to know more about how we install new sewage treatment plants or are looking for specific advice, please call our team, email us or complete the contact form and we will be in touch.
