Allow me to share with you something you will not hear from the majority of septic companies: I’ve actually been elbow-deep in raw sewage since I was twelve years old. Looks glamorous, website right? Back in the heat of ’98, my brothers and I thought our folks had lost their minds. Instead of enrolling us for little league like typical kids, we were excavating trenches for our family’s new septic system under the scorching Washington sun. Little did we know those blisters would become our blueprint.

This is the harsh truth the majority of companies will not admit: Septic work ain’t just about hardware. It is about knowing what occurs underground after the backhoe leaves. Nearly all folks start in this business through maintenance vans. We? We launched with shovels in our hands and muck up to our knees.

I’m never forget the day our installer, old Gus Petrovich, handed me a level and said, “Boy, if you are unable to lay pipe straight, you’re gonna drown somebody’s lawn in waste by Tuesday.” He sure wasn’t wrong. We invested three days that July battling with a stubborn clay bed near Redmond—shoveling, measuring, cursing, repeat. But here’s the twist: Gus kept bringing us to jobs all over Snohomish County. By 15, I could identify a dying drain field from 50 yards.

This is the DNA of Septic Solutions LLC. While rivals were busy buying fancy trucks, we were discovering why systems truly fail. Like that nightmare project in ’03 where we observed a “professional” crew install a tank with no regard for soil percolation. Three months later? Yard looked like a marsh. We promised then: No half-measures. Not once.

Jump to 2009. My brother Art (you’re going to see his name all over our permits) almost bankrupted us insisting on thoroughly testing every perc test. “Don’t forget the swamp house,” he would growl. We ate cheap food for six months. But when the downturn hit? Our systems kept operating while others collapsed. Overnight, “Nikolin boys” turned into a thing whispered between contractors.

Let me explain where we are different: We construct systems like we’ll have to fix them ourselves. Because you know what? We often do. Last Thanksgiving, Mrs. Callahan in Woodinville called freaking out about a holiday overflow. Art drove out in his gravy-covered shirt. Apparently her “self-maintaining” system installed in 2015 had a filter not a soul told her about. We never just fix it—we showed her grandson how to clean it.

You assume this is standard? Wrong. The majority of companies prefer you on a $200/month care plan. We would rather you know your system. Like that time we drew drainage diagrams on Dave Miller’s kitchen table in Everett while his toddlers added crayon clouds. Why? Because when Dave’s willow tree roots penetrated his leach field last spring, he spotted the waterlogged grass before it turned into a disaster.

Our special ingredient? It ain’t not secret at all. It’s in the rough hands. In the way Art still answers the phone at (425) 553-3422 himself. In the Instagram reel where my nephew groans at a DIYer’s “gravel-free drain field masterpiece” (@septic_solutionsllc—follow for laughs and solid tips). It is in the YouTube video where we compressed a 72-hour install in pouring Kirkland rain (@septicsolutionsllc).

But this is the actual magic: We have turned all failure into your benefit. That green disaster in Bothell? Showed us to add root barriers by default. The “phantom flush” mystery in Sammamish? Now we install effluent filters on every job. Even our tanks are different—we spec thicker concrete after observing how Pacific Northwest winters damage cheaper models.

Please don’t just take my statement for it. Ask the former Boeing engineer who dared us to manage his sloping lot in Duvall. “Impossible,” said three companies. We created him a pressurized system which has outlasted two of his cars. Or the young family in Monroe whose developer installed an undersized tank—we rebuilt their entire layout during a winter storm without exceeding their budget.

This is not business fluff. These are 25 years of frostbitten fingers, misunderstood soil reports, and fierce pride in doing it right. We cried over caved-in trenches in January storms. Celebrated when our sand-filter system saved a historic Carnation farmhouse. Even laid to rest our favorite shovel (RIP #3) with Viking funeral honors after it shattered during an epic granite battle.

So if you are scrolling through septic companies questioning who will not vanish after the check clears? Think about the boys who still know their first lesson from Gus: “A decent system hides. A excellent system works while hiding.” We never just establish this business—we cultivated it from the ground up, one real hole at a time.

Your turn. What is your system hiding?