From septic tanks to snow plowing and civil work, Jim Rose keeps his seven employees at Rivermist Holdings busy year-round in Kamloops, in the Southern Interior of British Columbia.
Septic system installations account for 50 to 60 percent of Rivermist’s business, which began in the mid-1980s as a sole proprietorship. Over time, the business has branched out, and now offers road building, topsoil services, foundation excavation, and self-storage units. The company even has its own gravel pit, used mainly to support the onsite installation side of the business.
Managing growth and the variety of businesses can be a challenge, Rose admits. That led him to incorporate as Rivermist Holdings Ltd., in 1999. “We were getting more equipment and it was all in my name. That becomes a liability issue,” says Rose, who operates the business with his wife Debra. His two sons, Jamie and Jordan, also work there, and both, like their father, are certified onsite system installers.
Rivers to mountains
In the last year, the company has installed more than 50 septic systems. British Columbia regulations delineate three types of onsite installations:
• Type I: Treatment by septic tank only.
• Type II: Treatment that produces effluent consistently containing less than 45 mg/l TSS and less than 45 mg/l BOD5.
• Type III: Treatment that produces effluent consistently containing less than 10 mg/l TSS, less than 10 mg/l BOD5, and a median fecal coliform density of less than 400 colony-forming units per 100 ml.
The systems Rivermist installed include 32 Type I, 18 Type II (including seven with Enviro-Septic leaching systems from Presby Environmental Inc.) and a pair of Type III designs.
Like his business, onsite installations can be quite diverse because of the variety of terrain around Kamloops, about three hours northeast of Vancouver. Kamloops sits at about 1,400-feet elevation near the 9,400-foot Mount Paul in the middle of the Cascade Range. Two branches of the Thompson River flow through town and feed Kamloops Lake.
The scenic city is surrounded by mountain forests, desert-like hills, and transitional grasslands. It doesn’t take long to go from the valley floor to 5,000-foot elevations in the nearby hills. “You can have three or four types of soil in the same area, and you have to make sure you’re getting an accurate reading on the soil,” says Rose. “You get 80 percent clay in one spot, and then another is all sand and gravel. It goes from too fast of a perc to a slow perc, and the two can be side by side.”
In a mountain valley, bedrock offers challenges many installers don’t face. “It can be from two feet to 10 feet below the surface, and you really have to be cautious to make sure you get a system that is going to work and handle the effluent so that it’s not just running down the bedrock into the lake, rivers, or water table,” says Rose.
Tackling big jobs
The variety of soil conditions is made even more difficult by the terrain, as illustrated by a 2008 project in the hills outside Kamloops. “We had to get 400 cubic meters of fill to put a sand mound on, as well as 135 cubic meters of sand,” recalls Rose. “We had to load it one bucket at a time, 85 feet up a hill along a goat trail. We couldn’t get any trucks up there.”
That Type II system required a three-in-one tank with pumps at the house and a trench up a steep grade to the drainfield. It took more than a week to finish the job.
Rose tries to keep his crews busy with onsite work, but he likes to have one large project going at all times that uses the company’s strength — its broad scope of services. One such job was a local marina, RV court, restaurant, and 36-unit housing development. The complex required a Type III system with a pair of 45-foot long, 10,000-gallon septic tanks feeding two drainfields of more than 10,000 square feet each.
“We had more than three years of work on that site,” says Rose. “We did the water and sewer installations for the whole site to connect everything to the septic system, along with road building and excavations for foundations and major structural fills to stabilize the foundations.”
The crew has a new project just like it now. Rose says long-term jobs are nice work and that being able to meet all of a customer’s needs helps build business. “You can go onto a site to look at a septic system and find out they’re looking for an excavator and end up building the road into the property and digging foundations,” he says. “Quite often, we’ll end up getting the whole works and will be there for a few weeks instead of a few two-day septic jobs.”
Right-sizing
The variety of work helps keep revenue flowing year-round, but Rose has to be cautious. “You can get too busy,” he says. “We have to make sure we don’t stretch ourselves too thin.” In fact, he’s already gone through one business change — reducing from 14 employees to seven.
“I’m more content with the smaller number,” he says. “I found myself working harder and putting in more hours, and I wasn’t making any more money, so I decided to cut back. It was the best thing we did.”
Now, he does only one big project at a time, supplementing it with onsite installations. With his two sons being certified, the three can do the plan together, and the boys do most of the hands-on installation work.
The team keeps the work fleet lean. It consists of three excavators (2005 EX200 Hitachi, 2001 EX120 Hitachi, Cat 303 mini), a 2004 Mack dump truck, pup trailers, two Cat 950 loaders, a 2004 Ammann 84-inch packer, a water truck, and a half-dozen snowplow trucks that help keep the business going during the long winters.
Rose enjoys giving back to the industry through involvement in associations that serve designers and installers across the province. He is a member of the British Columbia Onsite Sewage Association, and of Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of BC, a certification board for the province’s onsite installers and planners.
The self-storage business is the latest venture for Rivermist. While it seems to go against his wishes of staying small, it’s not very labor intensive. “It’s more for security down the road,” he says. “And we are currently expanding the mini-storage by adding three more buildings.”
And at least that will give him something to do in his “retirement” years as the kids take over the company.
