If you want to know what Dave Dittmer thinks about the onsite wastewater industry, just ask him. Hardheaded, straight talking, and a crusty old codger — that is one description of him, and it’s from a nomination speech for a position on the board of the Missouri Smallflows Organization.
Dittmer has been on the board for more than six years, re-elected to a fourth term in January, and he is proud of what the group is accomplishing.
“Education is the key to this business from every standpoint, from legislation, to installation, to operation,” says Dittmer, owner of Dittmer Ditching in Calhoun, Mo., near the Lake of the Ozarks and the Truman Lake Dam.
In his own business, Dittmer prides himself on doing the job right, and on doing it a little differently (a little better, he would argue) than others.
Times changing
Dittmer Ditching has been in operation since 1959, when it was an excavating company that did some septic system work. “You’d dig about 25 feet of 12-inch wide ditch, put in a 55-gallon barrel for a septic tank, add 25 feet of lateral line, and another barrel at the end with holes punched in it and gravel around it. That was a septic system.”
Something like that may have been all right, by that day’s standards, for a weekend cabin. But people are living in those lake cabins full-time now, and the population is growing. Still, Dittmer says, “Some installers are still doing open end discharge: ‘Get our money and run.’”
Dittmer supports the registration and continuing education requirements of Missouri’s onsite wastewater regulations — rules passed in 1996 with the help of MSO, which was formed in 1995. He says it’s just a few installers who are “doing most of the bellyaching” about the requirements.
“They don’t want to take time out, but they’re the ones that are the low bidders every time,” he says. “They buy their jobs on price, and get by with as little as they can get by with. Some of these rules are cramping their style, and they don’t like it.”
While such installers put their licenses in jeopardy, Dittmer says they don’t seem to care. “That’s one place where the MSO comes in,” he says. “We’re trying to educate people.” One such endeavor was a soils seminar held at the start of the MSO annual conference this year.
Proud of progress
“I’m proud of all this stuff and helped develop some of it,” Dittmer says. Installers need 20 hours of continuing education every three years, he says, and can get nine of that just by attending the annual MSO conference.
When Dittmer joined the fledgling MSO, there were about 200 members, mostly regulators and suppliers. Today, the association has more than 500 members. Most are installers, but they’re still the minority of the 2,600 registered installers in the state.
Dittmer is a big believer in the professionalism, integrity, and constant updating of methods and technology encouraged by MSO. In the 1980s, he was buying 500-gallon septic tanks in bulk and installing 100 feet of lateral for a drainfield. His home county didn’t have onsite regulations until 1989.
Dittmer thinks of himself as a leader. He was first in his area to use chambers from Infiltrator Systems Inc. He had one of first skid-steer loaders used for onsite installation. He was first to put tracks on a skid-steer and was first with mini-excavators.
“We have always been just a little bit different than everybody else,” he says. “I don’t mean to be bragging, but it seems to me that a lot of the things we do have been taken up by our competition. We are just about the first ones to try anything.”
A little adaptation
Dittmer Ditching, which includes just Dave and his two co-owner sons, Matthew and Patrick, still does some excavation work and sewer and water installation. Dave is a registered perc tester and does some septic system maintenance, but it’s mainly a septic system installation company. Sign a maintenance agreement when the company installs a system, and you get a guarantee.
“We try to do a conventional system if at all possible,” Dittmer says. He mainly uses drainfield chambers and buys mostly polyethylene tanks from Coon Manufacturing Inc. He uses two-compartment tanks when needed to gain a little edge in marginal conditions. He’ll also use concrete tanks if necessary in some of the rockier soils in Missouri.
He calls his systems “conventional with a little adaptation.” Dittmer uses chambers set in clean, inch-and-a-half rock instead of just burying the chambers in soil. When needed, he’ll get more filtration by adding a filter fabric around the gravel. “Little things like that are what we do to try to make a better quality system,” he says. “Of course, it adds a little cost. Sometimes we can sell it, sometimes we can’t.”
He sometimes installs dosing systems with chambers. That’s not the norm, but he does it when necessary to build a high-quality system. “We’ve had good luck with it,” he says. “We found that using a pump system and dosing is very effective.”
Tackling price-pushers
He is not a big believer in drainfield size reduction. That has cost him some work, but he won’t quote anything below 200 feet of drainfield trench even when others will. “Of course, they beat you every time,” he says. “They charge the customer more than they would have for 150 feet, but less than I’d charge for 200 feet, and they beat me every time.” And some times, the customer ends up calling him later.
“They say ‘He won’t return my calls. I’m tired of messing with him,’” says Dittmer. In one case, he upset a potential customer who had selected another installer and had problems with the system. “I asked if it was worth the $400 difference, and he hung up on me,” Dittmer recalls.
Some installers, he says, will give a low estimate, then charge to fix problems the customer runs into. “When it’s all said and done, the customer has a lower-quality system and has paid as much as I would have charged him up front,” Dittmer says.
Dittmer was able to solve a long- standing problem with a system that just wouldn’t work, even though the county had ordered a certain design for the undersized lot. “The builder just did what he had to do, and they tried to make it all gravity,” he says. “In order to make it fit the lot, they put in a drainage well. It never did work right. It failed and it failed and it failed.”
Eventually, a neighbor granted an easement for 100 feet of additional lateral so the system could be made to work, but the easement was good only for the current owner. Tragically, the owner was killed in a car accident last year, ending the easement. So the survivors couldn’t sell the house because it didn’t have a working septic system.
Doing it right
They called Dittmer to solve the problem, and it ended up being both costly and complicated. He added an Aqua Safe aerobic treatment unit from Ecological Tanks Inc., with a pump tank, a 1,500 square-foot drainage bed that had to be installed partially over the old bed, and a 1,000-gallon septic tank. It was expensive, but it works.
Another customer was so happy when Dittmer solved a long-standing problem with another installer’s system that he sent a Christmas card. “Thanks so much for all your excellent work on our septic system,” the customer wrote. “No complaints from the neighbors, no flashing red lights, and no audible alarms!”
Dittmer says his reputation for professionalism and integrity — and for doing it right — has helped his company. “When I tell someone it’s so many dollars, it’s so many dollars, unless there’s just a terrible difference,” he says. “I try to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Dittmer doesn’t think Missouri is as tough as other states when it comes to regulations, but he believes the state has done a great deal and is getting better.
“I don’t like regulations any more than anybody else,” he says. “But when installers won’t try to do what’s right, when all they’re interested in is getting the job, putting money in their pocket and running, you’re going to need some rules. And that’s what I’ve been fighting for for several years.”
Level playing field
That fight has included testifying before legislative hearings in his trademark cap, and working with MSO and his local legislator to beat down efforts to kill the registration and education requirements. “Of course we fought that,” he says. “I do not have a problem with competition as long as it’s good competition.”
The rules, he says, help put everyone on the same page. But counties still have the right to set their own regulations, and that causes some problems. Dittmer Ditching works in five counties within a 50-mile radius, so he works with five different sets of rules. “That’s what makes our job so tough. You have all these different rules.”
Dittmer gets upset thinking about installers who “just throw it in and bury it.” In his view, “It’s got to be right. If it’s supposed to be level, it has to be level. If it’s supposed to have a certain degree of fall, it has to have that certain degree of fall. And if it takes a few more minutes to tweak it out, that’s what happens.”
As he states on his web site, “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low prices is forgotten.”
