WCI Service & Maintenance: Tips for a Trouble-Free Off-Mains Drainage System During Christmas and New Year

With Christmas on its way, now is the perfect time to carry out some checks on your sewage treatment plant, pumping station or rainwater harvesting system. Any issues identified now can be addressed before you welcome friends and family for festivities.

Here are our top tips to make sure your system is ready for the season ahead.

Give Your System a Quick Check

As is always our recommendation, take a minute to walk around your system and conduct a quick inspection. This simple habit can help you spot early warning signs of a potential issue.

• Does the air blower sound normal?
• Are there any unusual or unpleasant smells?
• Do you see any wet patches or unusually lush green grass over your drainage field?

Catching a small problem now can save you from a major headache later. Your system has a normal ‘baseline,’ and noticing any changes early on is key to maintaining it.

Insulate Any Exposed Pipework

Outside taps and associated pipe work should ideally be insulated before the temperature drops. This could be as easy as installing a tap guard and a length of external pipe insulation care of your local builder’s merchant.

Such proactive efforts will ensure that taps and exposed pipework are protected and will reduce the risk of pipes freezing and bursting or leaking which may overload your sewage treatment plant and cause knock on problems such as overfill alarms, backing up of drainage towards the house, reduced treatment quality and overwhelmed soakaways/ drainage fields.

Review Your Report Recommendations

Were there any recommendations noted on the report? If there were, ask the WCI Service team when these recommendations should ideally be made and schedule them in. Where possible Sara and Chris will try to schedule such work when an Engineer is already on site servicing. This keeps costs manageable but where items need to be ordered in or more manpower is required this can’t always be done. Don’t hesitate to give the WCI Service team a call, we are here to help!

Avoid Overloading Your System

With a house full of friends and family you may well inadvertently overload your system over the Christmas and New Year Period.
Remind your guest that you are on a private drainage system and that only the Three Ps can be put in the system – Pee, Paper and Poo!

Stagger showers and loads of washing and if possible, pop out weekly to check on the system to put your mind at rest that it is coping well with the extra work. A helpful list of the WCI Dos and Don’ts can be found here

Switch on Holiday Mode

Some systems have a ‘holiday mode’ function which can be switched on if you are planning to be away for a prolonged period (up to 4 weeks). Systems that have this function include Solido or GRAF.

If you plan to be away for 4 weeks or more, consider having the system emptied and switch it off to prevent the bacterial colony dying or the contents from freezing.

Emergency Call Outs

If you are unfortunate enough to have a problem, even after diligently following our quick check guide above, please be reassured that there will be a Service Engineer on call every day of the festive period. Just follow the simple steps below:

1. Please don’t panic.
2. Call 01984 623404 and your call will be put through to the staff member on call.  Do leave a message if they are unable to pick up straight away. They will return your call ASAP.
3. Please have the following information to hand:
   • Full name and site address
   • Details of the system that is causing an issue
   • What that issue is – alarm flashing, toilet not flushing etc.

If you do have an emergency, remember that our call out charges are:

Please take a note of our opening hours over Christmas:
Office is closed from 5pm on 24th Dec 2025, reopening at 8am on the 02nd Jan 2026

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At WCI, we’re not just here to fix problems; we’re here to help you prevent them.