Septic System Replacement in Whatcom County

This is the biggest bill on the site, so it deserves the most scepticism. Before anyone replaces a system, three things should have been ruled out: an overdue tank feeding solids into the field, a mechanical failure such as a pump or a blocked filter, and groundwater overwhelming a field that would otherwise be fine.

We rule those out first, on every job, because a replacement quoted without that work is a guess with a large number attached.

Sometimes the answer really is replacement. Tanks crack and fail structurally. Drain fields that have been fed solids for two decades have clogged soil that will not recover. Systems installed to standards from fifty years ago are sometimes simply undersized for a house that has been extended twice.

When that is the case, the job is bigger than digging a hole. There is a design, a county permit, the old system to decommission properly, and a yard to put back together. We handle all of it as one piece of work.

We try not to. That is a strange thing for the replacement page to say and it is the most useful thing on it. The incentive in this trade runs the wrong way: the largest job is the one with the least diagnostic work behind it. Ruling out the cheap causes first is how we would want to be treated.

We decommission the old tank properly. An abandoned septic tank left in the ground is a genuine collapse hazard, and it will surface as a problem at the next property sale. It gets pumped and crushed or filled, and it goes on the record.

We put the ground back. A replacement tears up a substantial part of a yard. Backfilling is not the same as reinstating, and the difference is obvious for years afterwards.

And we are realistic about winter. Heavy excavation on saturated ground makes a worse mess and sometimes a worse result. If a job should wait for drier weather and it safely can, we will say so.