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I just recently bought a home in Wantagh (Forest City area) and I was wondering if anyone knew the history of cesspools and sewer conversions for this part of Long Island? The homes here were built in the early 1950s.
I ask because the corner of our backyard seems to be sloping down. The sinking is MUCH worse in my side neighbor's yard toward the same corner. Also, in the middle of my back neighbor's yard it is really sinking in, so much that an actual hole developed in the middle of her yard over the winter.
My side neighbor did mention she leveled out her yard at one point years ago and the sinking just continued and it's back to being sloped down again as it was before she leveled it out.
Forest City neighborhoods have an unusually layout. Each backyard backs up against 2 neighbor's back yards and this developing hole/sinking is more in the corner of my yard so I'm not so much worried about my land/house or the shed that resides in that corner, but I'm concerned for my neighbor's safety and whether this is the sign of a cesspool collapse in the making or something else possibly.
If anyone has historical information about the Forest City area and cesspools, or experience at all with something that sounds like this, I would REALLY appreciate your feedback. Any advice on who to contact to inspect it would also be great.
If the cesspools are there - and original - then they are WAY overdue for replacement if the house isn't hooked up to sewer, and need to be filled in if it is.
These would likely be the original concrete block pools (and if early 50's possibly would have the original orange clay drain pipe as well). In many cases over the years they would get totally saturated and then a line extended to another cesspool, creating a chain of them.
I believe that new regulations are currently sitting in the NY Legislature, so if I were you I'd get this work done before January 2017, otherwise a correction afterward would be expensive.
I ended up putting in a 1000 gallon septic tank and then a couple of new overflows around 8 years ago and filled in the old cesspools. Back then it cost me around $5,000, not sure what the cost is now. With a septic tank, assuming you're not the kind of person to pour tons of chemicals or grease down the sink, you'll find it will go a longer time before it needs pumping (in 8 years it only developed about 5" of sludge) and you should never need to pump out the cesspools again. I used Dave Lange Sewer Service but there are many companies around.
If this sinking is happening on or close the the property lines I would bet that the original builder bulldozed all the tree stumps and other debris to the property line and buried them, they are now completely rotted away and the ground above them is sinking.
We had an entire block in Mass Pk do the same thing about 15-20 years ago, was not cesspools as they were locaded in front of the houses prior to the sewer installation.
If this sinking is happening on or close the the property lines I would bet that the original builder bulldozed all the tree stumps and other debris to the property line and buried them, they are now completely rotted away and the ground above them is sinking.
We had an entire block in Mass Pk do the same thing about 15-20 years ago, was not cesspools as they were locaded in front of the houses prior to the sewer installation.
If the houses are early 50's then there's a good chance that they are still in the backyard. I think in the late 50's many areas switched to front yard cesspools.
I'd go along with the stumps and debris theory. Most cesspools were in front yards. One place to look is in the basement where the main waste line exits to the sewer. See if there is any evidence of a sealed opening in the basement wall in the rear where the line could have formerly exited to a backyard cesspool.
I'd go along with the stumps and debris theory. Most cesspools were in front yards. One place to look is in the basement where the main waste line exits to the sewer. See if there is any evidence of a sealed opening in the basement wall in the rear where the line could have formerly exited to a backyard cesspool.
Or if it's still active or not. Don't know Wantagh, but in Brookhaven up until 1955/1956 it was common to have cesspools in the back yard.
I just recently bought a home in Wantagh (Forest City area) and I was wondering if anyone knew the history of cesspools and sewer conversions for this part of Long Island? The homes here were built in the early 1950s.
I ask because the corner of our backyard seems to be sloping down. The sinking is MUCH worse in my side neighbor's yard toward the same corner. Also, in the middle of my back neighbor's yard it is really sinking in, so much that an actual hole developed in the middle of her yard over the winter.
My side neighbor did mention she leveled out her yard at one point years ago and the sinking just continued and it's back to being sloped down again as it was before she leveled it out.
Forest City neighborhoods have an unusually layout. Each backyard backs up against 2 neighbor's back yards and this developing hole/sinking is more in the corner of my yard so I'm not so much worried about my land/house or the shed that resides in that corner, but I'm concerned for my neighbor's safety and whether this is the sign of a cesspool collapse in the making or something else possibly.
If anyone has historical information about the Forest City area and cesspools, or experience at all with something that sounds like this, I would REALLY appreciate your feedback. Any advice on who to contact to inspect it would also be great.
Thank you so much!
Your best bet is to contact the Town of Hempstead and ask them if you're hooked up to a sewer. My parents house in Massapequa (ToOB) was built in 1955 with a cesspool in the front yard. It was hooked up to sewers in the late 70's. My home here in Brookhaven was built in the late 20's and has a cesspool in the backyard a short run from the house. It's still functional with a little help from an overflow pool.
It's possible that if you have sewers and your lawn is sinking in, the cesspools weren't properly abandoned. We moved to Levittown in 1969 into a house which was built in 1950. At that time the cesspools were starting to collapse in the area. The cesspools were located in the front of the houses, and once a depression appeared in that area of the lawn, we kids were warned to steer clear as it was only a matter of time before things fell in.
Thank you soooo much for all the replies. It appears this is a stumps & debris issue. Well, it's our best guess. The depression in the land is more in my two neighbor's yard than my own and she has since filled it in with compost for the time to raise it.
Turns out a few neighbors in this area are going through this same thing. Seems when the subdivision was built, their method of tree & debris removal was to dig a hole, bury it and move on. Seems extremely short-sighted but I don't know what they knew in the early 50s.
And there were cesspools here, but they were in the front yard. The entire area converted to sewers in the 70s.
Any additional information, personal experiences with this issue is greatly appreciated. Has anyone dealt with this in a way that was permanent? It seems the homes that have this depression in the land have to refill the land every couple of years.
There's probably thousands of abandoned cesspools out there. When I was still building pools (up until not too long ago) we would find them routinely while excavating. Many of them were just disconnected and left. That's how things rolled back in the day. I had the one in the house I grew up in collapse, probably early 80's.
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