Allow me to explain to you something you will not hear from most septic companies: I’ve been waist-deep in raw sewage since I was a preteen years old. Seems attractive, right? Back in the summer of ’98, my brothers and I thought our parents had gone and lost their minds. Instead of enrolling us for little league like regular kids, we were carving out trenches for our family’s new septic system under the brutal Washington sun. Who knew those wounds would turn into our blueprint.

Here’s the ugly truth nearly all companies will not admit: Septic work is not just about hardware. It is about knowing what occurs underground after the equipment leaves. Nearly all folks start in this business through maintenance vans. We? We launched with tools in our hands and mud up to our knees.

I will never forget the day our installer, old Gus Petrovich, tossed me a level and declared, “Kid, if you are unable to lay pipe straight, you’re gonna drown someone’s lawn in sewage by Tuesday.” He wasn’t wrong. We spent three days that July battling with a difficult clay bed near Redmond—digging, measuring, cursing, repeat. But this is the surprise: Gus kept bringing us to jobs all over Snohomish County. By 15, I could recognize a deteriorating drain field from 50 yards.

That is the DNA of Septic Solutions LLC. While competitors were occupied with buying fancy trucks, we were learning why systems truly fail. Like that horror project in ’03 where we witnessed a “expert” crew install a tank with zero regard for soil percolation. Three months later? Backyard looked like a swamp. We vowed then: No half-measures. Not once.

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

Here’s where we stand different: We build systems like we will have to repair them ourselves. Because you know what? We typically do. Last Thanksgiving, Mrs. Callahan in Woodinville called freaking out about a holiday backup. Art rushed out in his gravy-covered shirt. As it happened her “self-maintaining” system installed in 2015 had a filter not a soul told her about. We did not just solve it—we instructed her grandson how to clean it.

You think that is standard? Wrong. Nearly all companies want you on a $200/month maintenance plan. We’d rather you know your system. Like that time we sketched drainage diagrams on Dave Miller’s kitchen table in Everett while his toddlers added crayon clouds. Why? Because when Dave’s willow tree roots invaded his leach field last spring, he noticed the wet grass before it developed into a disaster.

Our secret sauce? It ain’t not secret at all. It’s in the blisters. In the way Art still picks up the phone at (425) 553-3422 himself. In the Instagram reel where my nephew facepalms at a DIYer’s “no-rock drain field masterpiece” (@septic_solutionsllc—subscribe for web page laughs and real tips). It is in the YouTube video where we compressed a 72-hour install in relentless Kirkland rain (@septicsolutionsllc).

But this is the actual magic: We have turned every setback into your benefit. That green disaster in Bothell? Made us to add root barriers standard. The “phantom flush” mystery in Sammamish? Now we install effluent filters on each job. Even our tanks are special—we spec thicker concrete after witnessing how Pacific Northwest winters crack cheaper models.

Please don’t just take my testimony for it. Ask the retired Boeing engineer who tested us to handle his sloping lot in Duvall. “No way,” said three companies. We constructed him a pressurized system that has outlasted two of his cars. Or the young family in Monroe whose builder installed an too-small tank—we rebuilt their entire layout during a blizzard without busting their budget.

This is not marketing fluff. It’s 25 years of frozen fingers, misunderstood soil reports, and fierce pride in doing it correctly. We cried over collapsed trenches in January storms. Cheered when our sand-filter system rescued a historic Carnation farmhouse. Even interred our favorite shovel (RIP #3) with Viking funeral honors after it shattered during an legendary granite battle.

So if you are scrolling through septic companies thinking who won’t vanish after the check clears? Remember the boys who still remember their first lesson from Gus: “A good system hides. A great system works while hiding.” We did not just build this business—we grew it from the ground up, one genuine hole at a time.

Your turn. What’s your system hiding?