It’s amazing at times how many people misunderstand septic systems, and the depth of the misunderstanding.
In one rural community where I lived, a tradition after a house party was for the guests to chip in enough money to have the septic tank pumped — the assumption being that all those people using the bathroom filled it up.
And maintenance contractors, upon completing a pumping job, have often heard a homeowner ask, “Was it full?”
Other homeowners, of course, don’t even think of the concept of “full” when they use significantly more water than their system was designed to handle. Arguably that kind of ignorance is worse.
In any case, many homeowners’ knowledge of the onsite system starts and stops at the septic tank. That’s a big, heavy, physical object that’s pretty easy to grasp. It’s the thing that gets dug up or uncovered every few years when that big tank truck comes into the driveway.
It’s harder for them to envision that network of trenches and pipes where the bulk of treatment happens — until sewage starts surfacing in the yard.
Getting attention
In this month’s Basic Training column, Jim Anderson and Dave Gustafson talk about the importance of educating homeowners at the time they face an ailing or failing drainfield.
That is, after all, a teachable moment. When the yard is damp with wastewater, a person can easily grasp the connection between that condition and excessively long showers every day or too many loads of laundry on the weekends.
Jim and Dave describe a case in which a homeowner, horrified at the prospect of cutting down beautiful mature trees to make way for a new drainfield, was readily convinced to monitor usage with a water meter, then change household habits to fit the system. In the end, the trees were saved.
It would be better if such teachable moments never had to happen, because when they do, damage already has been done. To that end, there’s another teachable moment that installers should take advantage of at every opportunity, and that’s the day an owner moves into a new house.
The problem for installers is that often their customer is the builder. It’s the builder who turns over the property; the installer isn’t around on moving day. Unless the builder is an unusually strong advocate for onsite professionals, the homeowner may be only marginally familiar with the onsite system and its care.
That extra mile
Many people move to country homes from the city and are not used to worrying about their wastewater. Some will remain blissfully ignorant if allowed to. After all, who wants to worry about sewage?
But maybe this is where the professional installer has to draw a line in the sand. Maybe the installer who wants to be just that little bit better will never let a homeowner take possession of a house without personally giving a half-hour lesson on the septic system and its care.
It isn’t a complex subject. For a basic, conventional septic system, just about everything the homeowner needs to remember fits on one side of a sheet of paper. (For more complex systems, the story isn’t all that much different. There are more moving parts to think about, but the most important thing to know is the phone number of a highly professional maintenance provider.)
Many top installers already meet with the customer sometime between the end of the installation job and the owner’s first day in the home. The question is: Are there exceptions? Does the homeowner get the tutorial even when it’s actually the builder who wrote the check for the installation?
All-the-time thing
It’s more difficult under such conditions to give the tutorial because the homeowner in a certain sense is not the installer’s customer — the builder is. But where there’s a will, there’s a way.
If you installed the system, you know where the homeowner will live. You can arrange for that Onsite 101 meeting, even if that means finessing things a little with the builder. Sure, it takes a little extra time and costs a little extra money. But it’s not hard to envision that investment coming back in great word-of-mouth. And what helps you in this instance also helps out the builder, who will have reason to see you in an even better light than before.
So perhaps the industry’s unwritten rule should be: If you install the system, you give its new owner the necessary instruction. It’s a way to take advantage of one teachable moment, and in the process prevent another one sometime down the road.
