Welcome to the Wonderful World of Title V Inspections

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Title V Inspections

So you’ve decided to sell your home and start a new adventure--congratulations! If you’re the proud owner of a septic system, you’ll need to add a Title V inspection to your to-do list. Massachusetts requires the inspection for every home sale with a septic system, and it’s usually pretty straight-forward. Most homeowners, if they’ve properly maintained their system through the years, have a pretty good idea of its health. I thought, though, that you might be interested in how a Title V Inspection works.

A Title V inspection is a seventeen page report that measures the health of your system on a specific day. It’s not a guarantee of future performance, and it’s not a snapshot of the past. In most cases, you want an independent inspector who is not also an installer to perform the inspection. It’s a bonus if the inspector can also do small repairs.

For the system to pass, the leaching field must be draining properly, not be in a high ground water area, and not be located too close to standing water. The inlet and outlet lines must have intact baffles (or Ts), and the d-box and the septic tank itself must be structurally sound. The lines leaving the house and moving through the system must allow steady water flow, be clear of debris, and be intact. The system will fail if the water (effluence) is not draining through the leaching pipes.

When you call me to do your Title V Inspection, the first thing I’ll do is call Dig Safe. It’s a Massachusetts requirement that they be called for substantial dig jobs. Dig Safe takes about seventy-two hours to ensure that no underground utilities are in the way, then gives me a start date and time. Next, I’ll go to Town Hall and get the home’s septic plans from the Board of Health and water records from the Water Department.

On inspection day I’ll come to your house with or without my pump truck, depending on whether you need your tank pumped too. I prefer to pump, but some people choose not to, usually because of money concerns. Depending on your plan, and the description of your system components, I may have to bring a mini-excavator too. I’ll ask a lot of questions about the number of people in the household, the presence of a sump pump or garbage disposal, the number of bedrooms, etc. Then I’ll check the basement for water stains and pipe leakage. Next, I’ll move outside and expose your septic tank covers and d-box, and inspect for all of the requirements I mentioned above. If everything is draining, without the need to replace any components, the system passes. If the system is in overall good shape, but an inspection component needs to be repaired, the system conditionally passes. I’ll make the repair, and with the approval of the Board of Health, the system will then pass.

And that’s it--one more item checked off that to-do list--nothing scary after all, just one step closer to that new adventure! Good luck and God speed. Give me a call or send me a note if I can answer anything else for you!

John Murphy is the owner of John’s Septic Solutions. Call him at 978-587-1192, find him on Facebook, or email him at johnsepticsolutions@hotmail.com. He’s happy to answer all your septic system concerns.