Most of the onsite industry has it all wrong and is out of touch with the rest of society. Think about it; if you buy manufactured products, you know that manufacturers are trying to create products today that are more durable and reliable than yesterday's products. Automobile manufacturers have improved the reliability of their vehicles to the point where many brands advertise 100,000 miles between tune ups. Paint manufacturers have developed blends that claim 20 years between reapplications. The mean time between failures for my new computer hard drive represents a 100 fold improvement over previous models. Reliability has always been synonymous with quality; if something lasts a long time and does not require constant observation, maintenance and service to remain functional, that is a clear indication of a high quality product.
Certainly we have the option of buying cheaper, less reliable products that we know will not last, or will require intensive service to keep functional. I am thinking Yugo here...remember them? If you were a Yugo mechanic you could probably keep one running...for a little while, anyway.
*As a quick aside, here are a couple of well-known Yugo jokes: Do you know how you double the value of your Yugo? Fill the gas tank.
What's the difference between a Yugo and a door-to-door salesman? You can close the door on the salesman.
Obviously, when a product becomes the butt of jokes like this, it's time to throw away the mold and retool, or get out of the business. Yugo chose the latter option. Today, however, too few Yugo-esque onsite system manufacturers are throwing away their obsolete molds...instead of being innovative in their retooling efforts, they have become exceptionally innovative and ambitious in their lobbying, marketing and liability-reduction efforts. It's cheaper to convince regulators that more rigorous maintenance programs are necessary than it is to develop a system that requires less maintenance.
Many manufacturers of advanced onsite treatment systems prefer to move in a direction opposite of greater reliability, durability and reduced service toward a requirement for more maintenance visits, more media cleaning, more tank pumping. One manufacturer has taken this idea to such extremes that the treatment system is required to be connected to a dedicated telephone line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Some might interpret this intense degree of remote monitoring as a sign that the product teeters on the edge of catastrophe every second of every day. I say this because the only reason I can think of why a manufacturer would impose such a procrustean requirement is because it is a necessary component if the system is to function at all. I can't think of too many household products with a requirement for 24/7 remote monitoring...not even the really dangerous ones that commonly catch fire are shepherded with such sophisticated software.
I have a furnace in my home. It could explode and burn the house down and with that in mind it represents an imminent danger. But my furnace is not connected to a phone line. Why? Because it is reliable and the fact that it has been functioning for years with no trouble is the clearest indication of its quality.
In fact, the only thing I can think of that is connected to mission control 24/7 is the space shuttle and International Space Station (Who said septic systems are not rocket science?).
Now let me be clear; community, clustered and some rural systems do benefit from this type of monitoring and I appreciate the benefits they provide. I utilize these devices as a convenience. The system will function adequately without 24/7 monitoring. But, for single family residential systems, a SCADA control system is excessive, and the only reason you would include one as a minimum requirement is if the system really needs it to let someone know it's broken ...again.
I suppose another handy feature of constant monitoring is that the manufacturer will have volumes of data to point to in the event of a system malfunction...any homeowner who dares to suggest that the manufacturer should assume the expenses associated with a premature malfunction or failure will likely be greeted with pages of data demonstrating how the malfunction or failure was the fault of the homeowner, not the system. Perhaps the homeowner used more water than the system was designed to handle on several occasions during the months preceding the failure, or perhaps there was a power outage at the home while the owners were away, so the system wasn't on all day every day...all of this data and more will be available to the manufacturer with the click of a mouse.
The notion that the primary purpose of remote monitoring is to "tweak" the system remotely, thereby eliminating the need for an in-person service call, just doesn't seem to play out in the field. In fact, I have spoken with a number of maintenance providers who say that they have had to respond--in person--to every single alarm on every system they maintain. Remote "fixes" are few and far between. With the majority of alarm states occurring during highly inconvenient times such as holiday weekends when families host guests in their homes and flows increase, I can only imagine that a fair number of maintenance providers have grown tired of the overzealous remote monitoring programs because they seem to serve but one essential purpose: to more effectively communicate a wider array of alarm states to maintenance providers so that an inherently unreliable technology can be coddled back into compliance whenever the pesky homeowner has done something to "wake the baby", so to speak. By "something" I mean the homeowner has, for example, flushed a few too many times in a given 24-hour period.
I was on a job the other day with an Eliminite system that was installed about 4 years ago. The property had been sold and the new owner asked me to visit with him and explain the system. Apparently, the previous maintenance provider did not visit the system so it had been operation the whole time with no inspections. When I arrived, we opened the lids, checked the pumps and panel and inspected the MetaRocks treatment media. Everything was functioning correctly and the media was in perfect condition. No clogging biomat, no ponding, no stink and no need to hose off the media...no need to "fluff" it, change it jostle it. I explained the system operation to the owner and when I arrived back at the office I found this email he sent:
I'm impressed that a new concept can operate for 4 years from start-up with no malfunctions or routine check-ups. I've been through a lot of start-ups but not many that had no problems.
In my opinion, the requirement for perpetual maintenance contracts covering onsite system has allowed manufacturers to peddle systems that are fundamentally unreliable because they have to be covered under a service contract any way. So who really cares if it work well or not, a Yugo mechanic is buying it. This has resulted in the dumbing down of the entire industry because there is no driving force for innovation or improvement.
Eliminite rejects that position and successfully designs, builds and installs more durable, reliable, efficient and less costly advanced wastewater treatment systems than any other manufacturer.
Do you remember the "lonely" Maytag repairman TV commercials? He was lonely because Maytag products were so reliable that all he did was sit in his shop waiting for a repair call that never came. I would bet the pod people wish for a little Maytag solitude.
In my last post I told you about a system we installed four (4) years ago that the maintenance provider failed to inspect. The system is at a high elevation in an area frequently mentioned on the weather channel as having the daily low temperature in the continental United States. It is clearly NOT the NSF test facility in Waco, Texas. It has been in continuous use.
