neolithic nivelles and fighting SSO

You can’t think underground sewer without thinking history, right? On the left see a corner in the cellar, just so that you understand our fear of SSO. Bear with me while I tackle the history aspect first before I attend to the SSO aspect.

How old is Nivelles? Danubian peoples apparently cleared forests and cultivated fertile soils here starting in 4000 BC. They made pottery and kept domesticated cows, pigs, dogs, goats and sheep. Here we are talking pre-bronze age…The region was gradually turned into agricultural land and then a couple of thousand years later the Romans came along, destroyed everything, built it up again. By now (my understanding anyway) we are apparently talking about the Iron Age….The Roman settlements were destroyed again and built up again by the Germanic invasions if the 3^rd century. How much infrastructure remained we cannot really tell but by the 7th century, the territory was part of the Austrian Frankish kingdom. Modern Nivelles was developed around the abbey founded by St. Gertrude, Pepin of Landen's daughter, in 648.

The main cause of SSO (Sanitary Sewer Overflow) usually stems from serious rainfall or a sewer line blockage. In our case it is because we live downstream from four restaurants, where food solids end up in the municipal sanitary sewer and this sewer is blocked by said debris. “The combined flow of wastewater and stormwater can exceed the capacity of the sewer system ….This circumstance is most prevalent in older cities whose subsurface infrastructure is quite old.” Nivelles is rather old. We know the sewer and our house are about 300 years old, or older in the case of the sewer. Who knows what iron age artifacts lurk there, adding to the debris?

The pictures below show two men struggling with SSO, one in India and one in Nivelles.