A mandatory onsite system upgrade came with a homeowner’s plans to add four bedrooms to his three-bedroom home in Granite Bay, California, and to expand the footprint from 3,640 to 8,500 square feet. The original 1979 trench-and-stone system also was in failure.
The homeowner hired his neighbor and general contractor, Gene Graves, for the remodel. Graves owns Excellent Construction and sister company, Sustainable Solutions, in Granite Bay. “I was in a quandary with this property,” he says. “Meeting setbacks for a creek, a large pond, a meandering swale, public utilities, and multipurpose easements ruled out a conventional onsite system.” The state
