Septic System Installation in Routt County, Colorado

New Septic Systems for Homes, Cabins and New Builds

If your property is outside a sewer district, and most of South Routt County is, then a septic system is not an accessory to the build. It is the thing the build waits on. Dream Ridge installs complete on-site wastewater treatment systems, which the county calls an OWTS, for new homes, cabins, shops with facilities and replacement systems on existing properties.

Owner David Stoltzfus is licensed and certified to install septic systems in Routt County. That is a county registration, and it is worth being precise about it: it applies in Routt County, not statewide. A lot of contractors working in this valley do not carry it.

What an OWTS Installation Actually Involves

A septic install is not just a tank in a hole. What you are paying for, in rough order:

• ✓A look at the site to work out where the system can physically go, and where it cannot
• ✓Soil evaluation and percolation testing, which decides the size and type of system
• ✓A system design, engineered where the site or the county requires it
• ✓The county permit, coordinated as part of the job
• ✓Excavation for the tank and the leach field, with the spoil managed on site
• ✓Tank set, distribution, and leach field or drain field construction to the approved design
• ✓Backfill, compaction and final grading so the ground drains away from the system
• ✓The county inspection, scheduled and met

The sequence matters more than most people expect. A septic field that gets driven over by a concrete truck during the build is a septic field you pay for twice. On new construction we would rather be in the conversation early, while the driveway and the building pad are still being placed, than be handed a corner of the lot after everything else is set.

Permits, and Why We Handle Them

Routt County requires a permit for a new or replacement OWTS, and the installer has obligations under it. On direct jobs David pulls the permit himself rather than leaving it with the owner, because the permit, the design and the inspection all have to line up with the work, and splitting that across two people is how schedules slip.

Fees, engineering thresholds and design requirements are set by the county and they change. We will tell you what applies to your site when we have looked at it. If you want the background first, we have written it up: Septic permits in Routt County.

Repairs and Replacements

If you have a system already and something is wrong with it, that is a different job with different urgency. Standing water over the field, slow drains through the whole house, or a smell that comes and goes usually means the field, not the tank. See septic repair and replacement.

Where We Install

Toponas, Yampa, Phippsburg, Oak Creek, Stagecoach, Hayden and Clark, plus Steamboat Springs and the surrounding county. Note that Steamboat Springs is on a sewer inside the city limits, so septic work there is on properties outside them. We also work across the county line into Grand County, although the Routt County registration does not extend there.