How you put the finishing touches on a completed onsite system will have a huge impact on both the longevity of the system and enduring customer satisfaction about the project. Ensuring proper operation of the system and meeting the homeowners’ vision for how they want the property to look is critically important. If ongoing maintenance or service is part of your business plan, taking care with the final details opens a path to continually connect with customers into the future.

Talk with homeowners about how they want the area around their system to look after vegetation is established. Finish the area to accomplish this vision, or if that vision would create problems with long-term system operation, have that conversation with them and come up with a solution. If you or your company do not want to be involved with the actual planting of vegetation over and around the system, establish relationships with landscapers in your area. Know who to suggest the homeowner contact and know what those planting needs will be so when you leave a site, the area is ready for that planting to occur.

PREVENT RUNOFF

In terms of finishing the system, it is not enough to simply provide a smoothed-off surface with all of the associated trash removed. It is amazing to us how many sites we go to where this is the level of job completion. The area around the system should be graded to ensure runoff water is directed away from the system and proper erosion control measures have been used to make sure soil over the system is not eroded with the first rainstorm after installation.

Necessary erosion control depends on the location of the system near bodies of water or drainage ways and land slope. On nearly level sites away from any water body, a straw mulch can be used to protect the soil from raindrop impact and reduce erosion and soil movement. For sloping sites, an erosion control blanket should be used. These blankets are usually composed of straw or coconut fiber layers between two jute-mesh layers. They are staked in place over the surface, over and surrounding the system. They can be left in place because they are meant to biodegrade and will disappear over time.

If the final landscape includes larger plants, a hole can be cut through the blanket to allow for the planting. Very often the site is seeded and the blanket laid over the top; whether this is the case depends on the final vision for the area. There are also blankets infused with ground cover seed. All these materials can be purchased through a landscape supplier. If you are putting in large numbers of systems, it will be less expensive to go directly to a wholesaler.

WORK WITH A LANDSCAPER

A landscaper we have worked with suggests using erosion blankets made of materials native to your area. Specifically, we do not have coconuts in Minnesota and Wisconsin, so we would not choose that product. His rationale is that you don’t know what other characteristics these materials will have that might potentially inhibit the growth of native plant species.

This makes sense. Why bring something foreign to the area if you have choice? We expect letters from landscapers asserting these blankets have been used extensively without any negative effects. This is true, but if there is a choice, go with the local materials and then there is no question.

If you’re installing a system next to a waterway, you may be required to install a silt fence, usually a geotextile fabric staked along the contour to prevent silt or clay moving with runoff water from continuing downslope. The fences should be installed before any excavation or soil disturbance takes place on the site. An alternative is to use straw bales, staked on the contour. With the ease of installation of the fabric fences, straw bales are not used much anymore. The need for this is site and regulation dependent, but it is your responsibility as an installer to provide erosion control for the site.

In our cold environment it is important to have a vegetative cover of some type over systems. The vegetation provides some degree of insulation and holds snow in place to further insulate the system. This includes all parts of the system: septic tank, piping and soil treatment area. Snow prevents heat from escaping the soil, keeping the frost depth shallow. So if the installation is completed at a time of the year where vegetation will not be established, adding additional layers of straw over the area may be required to help prevent problems due to freezing.