Septic Mozzies Must Die!
After our home inspection, we discovered that the property had three septic tanks. Being new to the experience of living in an older country house, we found ourselves unfamiliar with how to maintain septic tanks. The image that flashed in our minds was the scene from "Meet the Fockers," when he flushed the toilet and it led to a sludge of feces all over their yard!
After researching and learning how to maintain a septic tank, we scheduled an annual pumping, introduced enzymes, avoided using bleach, and were mindful not to let anything down the drain that doesn't easily dissolve.
We knew we wanted to immediately reroute our pipes to the main sewage line in our street.
However, immediately in Spain translates to we’ll get to it after measuring, and re-measuring, meetings, permits, paperwork, taxes and endless holidays! If you’re not familiar with a Spanish calendar, there are a lot of non-working days.
Everything in Red is a Federal Holiday and Sunday, in Green are local holidays, gray are typical non-working days and black are the other days. Under the leave policy in Spain, full-time employees are entitled to 22 days of paid annual leave. Employees may split the annual leave into separate periods, with at least one period being two weeks long. Employees must use up their statutory annual leave by the end of the year because the days typically do not roll over. It’s a wonderful policy when you’re an employee, Spaniards value their time with families, friends and experiences. It’s a different lifestyle, coming from America we are used to people wanting to work and selfishly wanting to get things done, quickly!
We’re learning the Spanish lifestyle like we are learning the language, poco a poco.
Finding ourselves unprepared for just how long it would take to get our septic out or pumped we dealt with the stench coming from the neglected, not pumped septic tank as we sat in our eating nook on a hot summer day. A breeze would pass by blowing the hot aroma of crap and attracting flies!
Meanwhile, we addressed the septic tank smell by having it pumped, all while continuing our dialogue with the architect on tapping into the main sewer supply. To quicken the process, we took the initiative to dismantle the wooden shed on top of the septic tank and repurpose its materials for vegetable beds. When the moment finally arrived, our goal was to ensure a smooth and speedy transition.
Jumping forward to this fall, we started to notice mosquitos as we sat outside eating at dusk with friends. You knew it was around 6:00 pm when you would start to see mosquitos flying around. Like the blood sucking vampires they are, they would hang upside down landing on the ceiling in the eating nook outside above our heads, discreetly biting when we weren’t looking.
Mosquitos and bugs have always favored my blood. Every vacation I would look forward to coming back like a tan bombshell, instead I would be covered in bites from sand fleas laying on the beach or mosquitos if we were hiking in the jungle in Hawaii. I love nature, but bugs, well I turn into Samuel L Jackson yelling Die Mother Fuckas as I smash them into oblivion.
Just a few hours outside at dusk and my legs and arms would look like I contracted the chickenpox virus. The mosquitos became more and more frequent and we began noticing them in our bedroom, and coming out of our drains. I started to think maybe it’s because I wiped out a lot of spiderwebs, now there wasn’t anything outside to eat them.
It got worse, when the rain started in October, we were killing 10 or more per night. It seemed excessive as our first fall here wasn’t as bad and we couldn’t figure out what’s changed. We tried to seal every crack in our bedroom, including the exhaust fan in the shower, cover and close all of the drains.
I would spray myself with an apple cider vinegar mix, drink apple cider vinegar, I did every Pinterest DIY post possible to be less attractive to mosquitos, aside from slathering my face with baking soda. If there was a way to change my blood to be less appealing I would happily consider it.
The nightly mosquito killing continued and I would still find myself waking with new itchy bites! At this point they wanted some new blood and started feasting on Kyle and the cats. The cats kept itching their ears, who were all on flea medicine so we knew it wasn’t fleas!
Kyle the mosquito hunter
Our friends tried to help by offering suggestions on how to get rid of mosquitos and felt maybe it’s because we’re closer to the Miño River. We are 30 minutes away from the Miño river and our friends that live close by didn’t seem to have a mosquito problem like us.
We had diffusers going with lots of mint, citronella, lemon eucalyptus and lavender, Kyle would wake in the night coughing from the aroma of essential oils. Only to find 4-5 mosquitos attached to the ceiling above us. We have found the mosquitos are different out here, they are resilient AF! The essential oils and bug zappers provided ambiance for the mosquitos and did nothing to repel or zap them!
Upon further inspection, we found a few hovering around the rosemary near our septic, which is supposed to be a natural repellent by the way. Kyle did some research online, as the problem was only getting worse. He found that just one septic tank can produce thousands of mosquitos. Mosquitos get inside broken or unsealed septic tanks to lay eggs. After they hatch and grow, thousands of adult mosquitos fly out of the broken or cracked septic tank each day!
I mean, that is the making of a Horror film if I ever saw one! At least we knew the source of our problem, and could work towards a solution.
Kyle lifted the wood planks that covered the tank and found there were cracks all along the top of the concrete where the mosquitoes would make their escape. He got some spray foam and tried to seal all the cracks, the only problem was, it wouldn’t stop raining long enough for it to dry! The rain just kept coming and the mosquitos had babies to feed.
We thought maybe we could spray them with an insecticide and kill some of them flying around the tank. With the stray cats and bees around the property we didn’t want to use something that would be toxic and harmful for them. I ordered a natural spray from the Gardenseedmarket that smelled like concentrated citronella. Kyle lifted up the wood planks over the septic, and sure enough there were thousands flying in his face as he sprayed.
The rain kept coming, and we were concerned everything he just sprayed would be washed away. We thought maybe it killed a few, but with the mosquitos being resilient AF, we would go to sleep and I would hear a mosquito buzzing in my ear. As a reflex I would smack my face, wake up and sure enough find a few on the wall.
When I painted our bedroom we had opted for a flat paint finish on the walls, which meant it wasn’t very forgiving to wipe off blood splatters when we would smash the mosquitos. We had ordered two of the natural mosquito spray, once there was a break in the rain, Kyle went out and sprayed again along with dunking more of the larvae killer in the tank.
The mosquito horror story continued, they were in the showers, coming up through the toilet, and out from under the sheets. At night it felt like we were being interrogated by mosquitos! They would buzz in our ear, we would wake up, try to find them to smash, then go back to bed and repeat it in an hr. We were getting maybe 4 hours of sleep every night, and hoping that it would get cooler outside to kill them. The only problem is, the mosquitos had a nice shelter in the tank and it was a perfect condition for them to continue to thrive! We decided to hang a mosquito net over our bed, it was the last resort as we knew it was going to become a playground for our four cats at night.
The night we hung it I couldn’t help crack up with laughter the entire time we were hanging it. We thought we would hang it with command strips that would hold up to 50lbs of weight, but with the semi gloss ceiling paint and the high humidity the tape didn’t want to stick to the ceiling and the net kept crashing down. We thought we had it all up, and once one of our cats jumped on the bed part of the net fell forward. It was a ridiculous comedy, one we never anticipated our lives to look like in Spain. Even with the countless bites, and blood splatters on the wall, I still couldn’t help to feel grateful that we didn’t have snow, didn’t have to wake up and go to work, and that this experience is as temporary as the itch from the mosquito bites. We had each other and laughing at this ridiculous experience was just part of this crazy journey living in the country out in Spain.
Since we met, we have always had an adventurous life with crazy stories, why would living in Spain be any different!
The next day Kyle put the mosquito net up with hooks screwed into the ceiling and we secured the openings with all of my hair clips. We went to Vigo with our friends, had a glass of wine, sushi and tried to forget about the crazy torture back at home. I’m so grateful for our friends, on our way home she insisted on stopping by the agro nursery center they go to near their house.
Carlos the owner recommended this mosquito poison that's safe for livestock, it paralyzes them and knocks them out so they drown. We also got a spray, you spray an area vacating it for over an hour. As soon as we got home, Kyle dropped some poison into the septic tank and sprayed our bedroom.
The next day he opened up the septic and there was a thick sheet of dead mosquitoes and larvae laying on the surface of the water! This was the winning mozzie killer combination! He did it again, to be sure, and after two days of not seeing any mosquitoes in our bedroom we took down the mosquito net.
Finally, there was a break in the rain and after 1.5 years the contractors had a strategy and a company they would work with to get our pipes rerouted to the main sewer line and the septic tanks destroyed. It took them a total of only 3 days to complete the project!
We were ecstatic to plant english roses and flowers where the septic tank used to be. We planted 11 different David Austin bare root roses, and we are so looking forward to taking in that fragrance next summer!
This horror story had a positive ending, and a lesson in septic maintenance, 1. Don’t have one, they are a pain in the arse! 2. Through shit comes roses!
