Septic maintenance contracts in Missouri

The dividing line is mechanical against passive. A conventional system is a tank and a gravity trench field with no moving parts. Its maintenance is pumping on a schedule and keeping vehicles and tree roots off the field. Missouri sets no statewide service-contract requirement for one. The state standard at RSMo 701.043 and the construction rule at 19 CSR 20-3.060 cover site selection, design, permits, inspection and repair of failing systems, and stop there.

A mechanical system is different in kind. It runs an aerator or blower more or less continuously, usually with a pump, a control panel with an alarm, and filters. Missouri already treats the class apart: every alternative system except a wastewater stabilization pond has to be designed and stamped by a licensed engineer.

In St. Louis County, Missouri a mechanical unit is the standard design rather than the exception, because the county's plumbing code requires all water-carried sanitary sewage to pass through an approved mechanical treatment plant before it reaches the soil. A homeowner there who pictures a plain septic tank in the yard is probably picturing the wrong thing.

• Aerobic treatment units, the class the St. Louis County code is written around.

• Drip and drip irrigation systems, and anything with a pump, a dosing tank or a control panel with an alarm.

• Conventional tank and gravity field: no statewide service contract, though St. Charles County still requires evidence of maintenance at least every five years.

Two numbers, and they are the plainest statement of this obligation in the metro. Owners must show evidence of ongoing maintenance: conventional systems at a minimum of every five years, alternative systems yearly.

Read the verb. The duty is to show evidence, so getting the work done and keeping nothing to show for it satisfies half of it. Keep the pumper's ticket, the service report and the invoice, dated and carrying the property address.

The county has a second reason to want that file. Before ownership of a property served by a private sewage system transfers, the seller must have it inspected for compliance with the county code by a third-party inspector licensed by St. Charles County. A five-year hole in the record becomes a problem with a closing date attached.

A routine visit is an inspection with a toolbox, not a cleaning. What a competent one covers:

• The aerator or blower. Running, drawing normal current, air line clear, diffuser not blinded.

• The control panel. Alarm sounds and lights when tested, breaker on, floats free.

• Sludge and scum depth in the settling compartment, which tells you whether pumping is due.

• Effluent clarity, color and odor in the final compartment, the fastest read on whether the biology is working.

• Filters, cleaned or replaced. A blinded effluent filter is a common reason a healthy system backs up into the house.

• The disinfection stage, if fitted. Chlorine tablets and UV lamps are consumables, so ask at every visit whether yours is due for replacement and have the answer written on the report.

• A walk of the dispersal area for wet ground, lusher grass or standing effluent, then a written report with the date, the readings and what was done. That report is the part the county cares about: St. Charles County requires evidence of maintenance, and a St. Louis County drip system has to have its annual inspection reported to the county.

Missouri registers the people who install onsite sewage disposal systems, not the people who service them, so the state installer list is not a directory of service companies. For a mechanical unit the manufacturer is a sensible first call, because St. Louis County's code makes a manufacturer show that repair parts and a qualified service company and personnel are available before its plant is approved at all. The rest of that county's mechanical plant rules, the NSF listing, the sizing and the access depth, are on the St. Louis County record and the aerator page, both linked below.

Watch the point where a visit turns into construction. Missouri defines a major modification or major repair as relocating the system or a part of it, replacing the septic tank, or constructing a new absorption field. As a rule that is permit work: RSMo 701.046 requires a construction permit first, and RSMo 701.031 requires the person installing an onsite sewage disposal system to be registered with the Department of Health and Senior Services. A service agreement does not cover any of it.

The qualification is written into the statute itself. Section 701.046 opens "Except as provided in section 701.031", and 701.031 excludes the owner of a single-family residence lot of three acres or more, or of a residential lot of 10 acres or more meeting a separation and density test, from sections 701.025 to 701.059 and the rules made under them. The conditions are strict. The exclusion does not reach lots adjacent to lakes operated by the Corps of Engineers or by a public utility, every point of the system has to sit more than 10 feet from any adjoining property line, and no effluent may enter an adjoining property, contaminate surface water or groundwater, or create a nuisance. Do not read it as permission to skip the permit either: a county may regulate under its own ordinance regardless, and the St. Louis metro counties do.

The file becomes a document in a real estate transaction. In St. Charles County, Missouri the seller must have the system inspected for compliance with the county code before ownership transfers, by a third-party inspector the county licenses. A complete record does not remove that inspection, but it is the difference between an inspector confirming what the file says and an inspector meeting your system cold.

In St. Louis County, Missouri a drip system carries a transfer duty of its own. Test reports, records of all maintenance, approved system drawings and the requirements of the rules go to the next owner at transfer of title, on top of the two-year maintenance policy filed with the county and the annual inspection reported to it.

No general point-of-sale septic inspection appears in the St. Louis County chapters read for this page, though the health commissioner's own rules were not readable, so confirm with the county before you list. If there is no service file at all, get the system serviced and inspected before it goes on the market rather than letting the buyer's inspector find it first.

Two contracts on the same unit can be very different products. Read for what is included, what is billed on top, and what happens when a part fails at nine on a Sunday night. Get it in writing before the first visit, because a verbal arrangement leaves you nothing to show a county that asks for evidence of maintenance.

• Visit frequency, and whether it produces evidence at the interval your county wants to see. St. Charles County wants yearly on an alternative system.

• Who receives the report: filed with the county, mailed to you, or kept only by the company. Get a copy either way.

• Whether pumping and parts are in or out. Pumping usually is not, and labor-only coverage is a normal product that is not the same as parts and labor.

• Alarm response. How fast somebody comes, and what an after-hours call costs against a scheduled one.

• Whether the company services your make of unit and can get parts for it.

• Term, automatic renewal, and what voids it. Some agreements exclude a system that was already failing when the contract started.

It is not insurance. It buys scheduled attention and a written record. It does not pay to rebuild the system when the system is what failed.

A failed absorption field is the clearest example. When effluent surfaces or backs up because the field will no longer take water, the fix is construction: a new field, sometimes a new tank. Missouri treats that as a major modification or major repair, which as a rule means a construction permit and a registered installer, subject to the large-lot exclusion described above and to whatever your county's own ordinance requires. No service agreement turns it into a covered visit. It cannot change the ground either, so if shallow bedrock or a high water table is the underlying problem, servicing the equipment does not touch it.

The honest downside is that a contract is a recurring cost that does not end, and not every system earns it. On a conventional tank and gravity field it can amount to paying on a schedule for work a pumper would be doing on its own schedule anyway. On an aerobic unit the calculation flips, because the aerator runs continuously and its failure is quiet: the first symptom can be a field that has been taking poorly treated effluent for months. Attention to a machine nobody else looks at is what the money buys.

Start with what you have. Find the make and model on the unit's tag or inside the control panel door, then find the permit file. Your county's permitting authority holds the approved drawings, and those tell a service company what they are walking into. In most Missouri counties that authority is the local health department. In the rest it is a sewer district, a building department, or a planning and zoning department, and where the authority rests on a local ordinance the local rule can be stricter than the state standard. The St. Louis metro roundup of who permits where is on the St. Louis septic page, linked below.

If the system has been out of service for years, expect the first visit to be an inspection and expect it to find something: an aerator that failed silently, a pump seized in the wet well, a filter never cleaned, an alarm disconnected because it kept going off. Get the repair list first, then put the system under contract.

Tell us your county and what kind of system you have, and an independent local septic contractor who works that county will call you back. If you are not sure what you have, say so. A technician can settle it in one visit.