So as they were excavating for the new entrance to the basement they hit a brick wall - literaly.
However the bricks were in more of a dome shape than a wall. What they hit was the old cesspol, which is large 8 foot in diameter brick dome sitting on an stone foundation. A cesspool is an early design of our modern septic tank. Ours is brick and stone which was a typical construction in the 1880-1900. This is a rough design but ours is more of a dome. We found the access manhole when we took up the driveway but it was not actually on top of the cesspool.
Here is a photo I took of the inside of the cesspool (I stuck my hand in - that is as far as I wanted to go). You can see it is quite a nice pice of masonry. Notice the old bottles and cans in the pit. These would have been put in through the manhole, not via the house out flow.
Quite interesting - this was just below our driveway - who knew.
However the bricks were in more of a dome shape than a wall. What they hit was the old cesspol, which is large 8 foot in diameter brick dome sitting on an stone foundation. A cesspool is an early design of our modern septic tank. Ours is brick and stone which was a typical construction in the 1880-1900. This is a rough design but ours is more of a dome. We found the access manhole when we took up the driveway but it was not actually on top of the cesspool.
Here is a photo I took of the inside of the cesspool (I stuck my hand in - that is as far as I wanted to go). You can see it is quite a nice pice of masonry. Notice the old bottles and cans in the pit. These would have been put in through the manhole, not via the house out flow.
Quite interesting - this was just below our driveway - who knew.
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