Design and installation, from the first trench to a complete system that works right and keeps working.
Most properties outside the Smithers and Telkwa municipal systems run on an onsite septic system, and a septic system is the piece of infrastructure people think about least until the day it stops working.
We design and install them, and we fix the ones that have failed. Whether it is a new build that needs a system from scratch, an acreage with a field that has given up, or a lot in town that needs a service connection run to the property line, it is the same crew and the same machines.
In British Columbia an onsite sewerage system has to be designed and filed with the health authority before construction starts, and then built to that filed design. For Telkwa, Smithers and the rest of the region that filing goes to Northern Health.
We handle the design and the installation together, so you are not lining up a designer, a separate installer and the paperwork yourself and hoping the three of them agree. One point of contact from the site assessment through to the system running.
Bulkley Valley soils run the whole range, from free draining river gravel to heavy clay that will barely perc at all. The soil is what decides the system, not the other way around, which is why the site assessment comes first and the design follows it.
Getting that wrong is expensive. A field sized for the wrong soil, or set at the wrong depth for our frost, does not fail immediately. It fails in year four, in the spring, in your yard.
Soggy ground over the disposal field, drains that back up through the house, smell in the yard, or a tank that needs pumping far more often than it used to. Those are the signs a system is at the end of its life rather than just due for service.
Call us and we will come look at it. Sometimes it is a repair. Sometimes the field is finished and the honest answer is a rebuild, in which case we will tell you that rather than sell you a patch that buys one season.
Whether your job is a service connection or a complete onsite system comes down to one thing, which side of a municipal boundary the property sits on. After that it is the soil.
Inside the village the work is a sewer service connection run to the property line and tied in. Outside it, every property is on its own system. The river bench gravels around Telkwa drain freely, which sounds like the easy version and largely is, but a fast percolation rate has its own design consequences and the system still has to be assessed, designed and filed with Northern Health before anything is dug.
Properties in town connect to municipal service. The acreages ringing it are all onsite, and those are where the difficult ground is. Bench and hillside clays perc slowly, and a slow soil means a larger disposal field or an engineered system rather than a conventional bed. That is the whole reason the site assessment happens before anyone quotes you a tank, because on this ground the soil picks the system and not the budget.
Rural lots on a well and a field, which makes setback distances the thing that shapes the layout. The well, the house, the field and the property lines all have to hold their separations from each other, and on a big parcel that is a planning exercise before it is a digging one. The valley bottom also sits cold, so line depth and how deep a tank gets buried are set against frost rather than against convenience.
Also working Witset, Quick, Hazelton and Round Lake, and the rest of the valley in between. If your property is somewhere not on this list, call and ask, the answer is usually yes.
In British Columbia an onsite sewerage system has to be designed and filed with the health authority before construction starts, and then built to that filed design. For Telkwa, Smithers, Houston and the rest of the region that filing goes to Northern Health.
Under the provincial regulation only a Professional Engineer or a Registered Onsite Wastewater Practitioner may design or install one. Ask us about your job and we will tell you exactly who is doing the design and the filing on it before any work is scheduled.
Soggy ground over the disposal field, drains backing up through the house, smell in the yard, or a tank needing pumping far more often than it used to. Those point at a system at the end of its life rather than one simply due for service.
Sometimes, and we will come look at it and tell you which one it is. If the field is finished, we will say so rather than sell you a patch that buys a single season.
The soil, mostly, together with the number of bedrooms the house is designed for. Valley soils run from free draining river gravel to clay that will barely perc, and measuring which one you have is what the site assessment is for.
