wasn't told about faulty? cesspit before purchase

[jessb]

Hello,

 

We purchased our house 1 year ago.

It has a cesspit,

which we never saw as a problem before purchasing.

 

The previous owner has not had the cesspit emptied for 5 years

- so our first job was to get it emptied, (we did ask him to empty it before as part of the purchase, but he declined).

 

So we have the cesspit emptied - and had one of the wettest winters for a long time.

The cesspit constantly had water in it.

 

We then had a problem with the washing machine not draining 3 months after we moved it and

 

looked in the drains and they were full, so

had the cesspit emptied again,

spoke to man who emptied it and he said it meant to have water in all the time for it to work.

 

we accpeted this and stopped looking.

 

The a month after that, i was clearing the garden and found another drain in the garden.

This drain was never mentioned to us or to the surveyor.

I opened it to find it was filled to brim.

 

again we have the cesspit emptied.

 

Few days later we look in the drain again and it had water in it.

 

Had several different people out to look at it and have been told that the cesspit is a decongestant tank

and should have mains power to it to clean/filter the water as we do not have a soak away,

the water gets distributed around the garden.

 

Problem is we have to empty the water out of the cesspit weekly or it overflows into the garden.

 

We now how two choices - a new cesspit or to go on the main drainage.

 

Is there anyway we can get some of the cost of this back from previous owner, solicitor or surveyor?

 

We are so dissapointed.

 

Thanks in advance