Let me share with you something you won’t hear from nearly all septic companies: I’ve been buried in raw sewage since I was a preteen years old. Sounds attractive, right? Back in the heat of ’98, my family and I thought our parents had gone and lost their minds. Instead of registering for little league like typical kids, we were excavating trenches for our family’s new septic system under the brutal Washington sun. Little did we know those calluses would become our blueprint.

This is the harsh truth nearly all companies won’t admit: Septic work is not just about equipment. It’s really about understanding what goes on underground after the machinery leaves. Most folks get into this business through service vehicles. We? We started with implements in our hands and muck up to our knees.

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

That’s the DNA of Septic Solutions LLC. While others were occupied with buying flashy trucks, we were learning why systems actually fail. Like that nightmare project in ’03 where we observed a “professional” crew install a tank with zero regard for soil percolation. Three months later? Yard looked like a swamp. We swore then: No compromises. Ever.

Fast forward to 2009. My brother Art (you’ll see his name all over our permits) nearly bankrupted us insisting on thoroughly testing every perc test. “Don’t forget the swamp house,” he used to growl. We ate instant noodles for six months. But when the downturn hit? Our systems kept functioning while others failed. Overnight, “Nikolin boys” became a thing mentioned between contractors.

Here’s where we are different: We create systems like we will have to fix them ourselves. Because guess what? We usually do. Last Thanksgiving, Mrs. Callahan in Woodinville called panicking about a holiday overflow. Art drove out in his dinner-soiled shirt. As it happened her “self-maintaining” system installed in 2015 had a filter not a soul told her about. We did not just fix it—we instructed her grandson how to clean it.

You believe this is standard? Wrong. Most companies push you on a $200/month care plan. We would rather you understand your system. Like that time we mapped out drainage diagrams on Dave Miller’s kitchen table in Everett while his children added crayon clouds. Why? Because when Dave’s willow tree roots attacked his leach field last spring, he noticed the waterlogged grass before it became a disaster.

Our secret sauce? It ain’t not secret at all. You’ll find it in the rough hands. In the way Art still picks up the phone at (425) 553-3422 directly. In the Instagram reel where my nephew groans at a DIYer’s “gravel-free drain field masterpiece” (@septic_solutionsllc—check us out for laughs and real tips). It’s in the YouTube video where we time-lapsed a 72-hour install in pouring Kirkland rain (@septicsolutionsllc).

But let me share the real magic: We’ve turned each mistake into your benefit. That overgrown disaster in Bothell? Showed us to add root barriers by default. The “phantom flush” mystery in Sammamish? Now we install effluent filters on each job. Even our tanks are unique—we spec thicker concrete after seeing how Pacific Northwest winters crack cheaper models.

Don’t just take my word for it. Ask the retired Boeing engineer who challenged us to tackle his sloping lot in Duvall. “Can’t be done,” said three companies. We built him a pressurized system that has outlasted two of his cars. Or the young family in Monroe whose builder installed an inadequate tank—we reconfigured their complete layout during a blizzard without breaking their budget.

This isn’t marketing fluff. These are 25 years of frostbitten fingers, misread soil reports, and web site relentless pride in doing it correctly. We have cried over collapsed trenches in January storms. Celebrated when our sand-filter system rescued a historic Carnation farmhouse. Even buried our favorite shovel (RIP #3) with Viking funeral honors after it broke during an brutal granite battle.

So if you find yourself scrolling through septic companies wondering who won’t disappear after the check clears? Consider the boys who still remember their first lesson from Gus: “A good system hides. A excellent system works while hiding.” We never just build this business—we cultivated it from the ground up, one real hole at a time.

Your turn. Tell me what your system hiding?