I'm going to buy my second house soon and the first thing I'll do is raise the floor at least a meter. I will also be putting in a septic tank (not sure how the waste is currently being handled since the house doesn't already have one). In the first house I renovated a few years ago, the father in-law was adamant about installing access tiles at roughly 4-meter intervals in case there were ever a blockage in the main waste discharge line going out to the street. I followed his advice but think these tiles are ugly as sin and they wobble when you walk on them. I occasionally see cockroaches scurrying down into the openings between the access tiles and the floor. I really don't want to put them in the new place.

Do you think these are really necessary? In the event of a blockage, don't plumbers here know how to properly snake-out a waste pipe without lifting up floor tiles?

Here's a picture of the ones in my current place (the in-laws' house), which has fourteen of these ugly access points scattered around the property. As if that speckled tile wasn't ugly enough.

Snake is normally in the form of bamboo so there needs to be openings to insert and push/pull for cleaning. This is normally outside of house in the French drains at property line so not a big deal and often combined as drains for rainwater with open grated tops rather than completely covered. The pits at the junctions are then cleaned out to keep everything running - just as is done on all roads that I have seen here.