Playas del Coco is a working beach town as much as a tourist one. Along the main street you find restaurants, bars, dive shops, small hotels and supermarkets, and behind them condos and homes climb the surrounding hills. Ocotal, just south, is quieter: hillside villas, a few resorts and gated communities above a small cove. Both belong to the district of Sardinal, in the canton of Carrillo, so local construction permits go through the Municipality of Carrillo.
The mix of commercial kitchens downtown and hillside residential projects around it defines most of the wastewater work here.
Downtown Coco: kitchens, grease and small lots
A restaurant produces a very different wastewater than a home. It carries grease, food solids and cleaning products, and it arrives in bursts at lunch and dinner. In a small lot with an old septic tank, that combination ends in backups, smells and complaints.
What the rules say and what we check:
- Grease trap first. Under Decree 42075-S-MINAE, dishwashing water must pass through a two-chamber grease trap before the septic tank, and the trap must be cleaned every three months. A busy kitchen usually needs a larger trap and more frequent cleaning than the minimum.
- The 190 cubic meter line. A septic tank and drain field are allowed only up to 190 cubic meters of drinking water per month, actual or projected. A popular restaurant, a hotel with a restaurant or a building with several businesses can cross that line, and then a treatment system approved under Decree 39887-S-MINAE is required.
- Space for the drain field. It must go in private green areas, never under parking or paved patios, with 1 meter from property lines and buildings. Many downtown lots simply do not have that space, which is one more reason to consider a compact plant.
- No shortcuts. Discharging septic tank effluent to the street drain or a stream is prohibited, and so are seepage pits.
If your system is already giving trouble, our guide on septic smells and overflows explains the usual causes and what to do first.
The hills: condos, villas and pumping
Above town and in Ocotal, the challenge is topography. Units sit at different levels, roads are steep, and the flat area needed for a plant or a drain field is often far from the buildings. A good design here usually includes:
- a gravity sewer network inside the development where the slope allows it;
- a pumping station where it does not, with backup equipment and alarms so a power cut does not mean an overflow;
- a treatment plant sized for full occupancy, not for the average month;
- stormwater drainage that keeps heavy rain out of the wastewater system.
Drain field trenches are not allowed on slopes above 30 %, and must keep 2 meters from the top of slopes steeper than 25 %. On a terraced hillside, that removes a lot of space.
Once a condo plant runs, the condominium must keep a logbook, measure and analyze its effluent, and file operational reports with the Ministry of Health. We cover those duties on our HOA compliance page.
Water: scarce in the dry season
The North Pacific has a dry season from December to March, with April as a transition month, and Guanacaste is among the least water-rich regions of the country, according to the National Meteorological Institute. For a buyer, that means two things: confirm water availability with the operator that serves the exact lot before you commit (see our guide on buying land: water and wastewater checks), and consider reusing treated water for irrigation instead of letting it all infiltrate.
How we help in Coco and Ocotal
Ingeniería de las Aguas, based in Palmares, Alajuela, works throughout Guanacaste. Here we can:
- review a struggling restaurant or hotel system and redesign it;
- design and build treatment plants, improved septic systems, pumping stations, sewers and drainage;
- design drain fields from percolation test results;
- prepare operational analyses and reports and follow up on performance;
- handle permits with the Ministry of Health, MINAE's Water Directorate, SETENA, AyA and the Municipality of Carrillo;
- supervise construction.
For the rest of the province, see our Guanacaste overview or the page on Flamingo, Potrero and Brasilito.
Tell us what you have and what is happening: send the location, the type of property and a few photos on WhatsApp, or write to us through the contact page.