Beginning with the days of the outside 'privy' at the bottom of the garden, it was taken for granted that sewage could simply be dumped in a shallow hole and buried underneath the vegetable patch.  This resulted in vegetables of enormous size with that special 'home-grown' taste.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with this, and, if sewage had remained as only 'bodily waste' the practice could have continued until the present day. Problems began with affluence. Bathrooms were installed. Washing machines and dish-washers appeared, and the use of 'hygiene products' became the norm. Bathing habits changed from once a fortnight to once a day.  The vegetable patch could no longer cope, so alternative methods of disposal had to be devised. 

By this time 98% of the sewage was just water, so a way had to be found to make all this rather dirty water disappear. The solution was to channel all the sewage into a 'septic' tank to trap solid matter, and then to allow the dirty water to run out into a porous area of ground and simply soak away. Good idea ?? Only sometimes! Problems occured when a porous area of ground was not to be found. A lot of the country is formed from heavy impervious clay, or rock, or some other non-porous media, and in these locations the wastewater generally ended up in a convenient ditch or stream. Nobody worried if the ditch was a bit smelly. It was the countryside after all. It was supposed to be smelly! 

Unfortunately, the dirty water was now becoming more sinister. It contained not just the residue from the loo, but a cocktail of chemicals from washing powder, detergents, and other rather nasty things.  The first thing that happened to the ditches was a sudden choking spurt of vegetation growth fuelled by the fertiliser nutrients in the waste water. The other waste, plus decaying vegetation, were slowly broken down by bacterial and chemical action.  This depleted the ditch water of oxygen, so aquatic life was wiped out. 

If the problem had stayed local, little would have been done, but ditches run into streams, and eventually  into rivers.  The quantity of effluent from sewage tanks and farms and rural commerce started to affect the aquatic life in main rivers. At this point things began to get political.  The National Rivers Authority came into being with fairly wide powers to seek out and stop river pollution. Their main targets were industry and farming, but also caught up in the web were domestic dwellings.

Disposal of untreated sewage wastewater into ditches and watercourses became an offence. A new solution had to be found. Enter  I.H.S. Systems - one of several firms established in the 1970's - to find answers to the sewage problem, or what had now become known as 'Environmental Pollution'.  The answers were not that difficult.   If the towns had municipal sewage works then why not use the same principles in the countryside. The only difference was in scale. Town sewage works catered for thousands. Rural sewage works would need to cater for the occupants of just one or two houses.

The solution was a 'packaged sewage plant' - just like the municipal works with all the stages of treatment, but contained in one little tank. Numerous designs were built and tested, but the final results were whittled down to just three types which produced treated water pure enough to satisfy the Rivers Authority. Enhanced versions of these units are the mainstay products installed by us throughout the country.  See the SOLUTIONS page for details.