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Cover Story Published
August 2007
Standing Up for
Standards
By Doug Day (page 24)
The owner of Dittmer Ditching believes in professional education and
standards as assurance of quality work for customers and as a way to
level the playing field.
If you want to know what Dave
Dittmer thinks about the onsite wastewater industry, just ask him.
Hardheaded, straight talking, and a crusty old codger — that is one
description of him, and it’s from a nomination speech for a position
on the board of the Missouri Smallflows Organization.
 Dittmer
has been on the board for more than six years, re-elected to a
fourth term in January, and he is
proud of what the group is accomplishing.
“Education is the key to this
business from every standpoint, from legislation, to installation,
to operation,” says Dittmer, owner of Dittmer Ditching in Calhoun,
Mo., near the Lake of the Ozarks and the Truman Lake Dam.
In his own business, Dittmer prides
himself on doing the job right, and on doing it a little differently
(a little better, he would argue) than others.
Times changing
Dittmer Ditching has been in
operation since 1959, when it was an excavating company that did
some septic system work. “You’d dig about 25 feet of 12-inch wide
ditch, put in a 55-gallon barrel for a septic tank, add 25 feet of
lateral line, and another barrel at the end with holes punched in it
and gravel around it. That was a septic system.”
Something like that may have been
all right, by that day’s standards, for a weekend cabin. But people
are living in those lake cabins full-time now, and the population is
growing. Still, Dittmer says, “Some installers are still doing open
end discharge: ‘Get our money and run.’”
Dittmer supports the registration
and continuing education requirements of Missouri’s onsite
wastewater regulations — rules passed in 1996 with the help of MSO,
which was formed in 1995. He says it’s just a few installers who are
“doing most of the bellyaching” about the requirements.
 “They
don’t want to take time out, but they’re the ones that are the low
bidders every time,” he says. “They buy their jobs on price, and get
by with as little as they can get by with. Some of these rules are
cramping their style, and they don’t like it.”
While such installers put their
licenses in jeopardy, Dittmer says they don’t seem to care. “That’s
one place where the MSO comes in,” he says. “We’re trying to educate
people.” One such endeavor was a soils seminar held at the start of
the MSO annual conference this year.
Proud of progress
“I’m proud of all this stuff and
helped develop some of it,” Dittmer says. Installers need 20 hours
of continuing education every three years, he says, and can get nine
of that just by attending the annual MSO conference.
When Dittmer joined the fledgling
MSO, there were about 200 members, mostly regulators and suppliers.
Today, the association has more than 500 members. Most are
installers, but they’re still the minority of the 2,600 registered
installers in the state.
Dittmer is a big believer in the
professionalism, integrity, and constant updating of methods and
technology encouraged by MSO. In the 1980s, he was buying 500-gallon
septic tanks in bulk and installing 100 feet of lateral for a
drainfield. His home county didn’t have onsite regulations until
1989.
Dittmer thinks of himself as a
leader. He was first in his area to use chambers from Infiltrator
Systems Inc. He had one of first skid-steer loaders used for onsite
installation. He was first to put tracks on a skid-steer and was
first with mini-excavators.
“We have always been just a little
bit different than everybody else,” he says. “I don’t mean to be
bragging, but it seems to me that a lot of the things we do have
been taken up by our competition. We are just about the first ones
to try anything.”
A
little adaptation
Dittmer Ditching, which includes
just Dave and his two co-owner sons, Matthew and Patrick, still does
 some
excavation work and sewer and water installation. Dave is a
registered perc tester and does some septic system maintenance, but
it’s mainly a septic system installation company. Sign a maintenance
agreement when the company installs a system, and you get a
guarantee.
“We try to do a conventional system
if at all possible,” Dittmer says. He mainly uses drainfield
chambers and buys mostly polyethylene tanks from Coon Manufacturing
Inc. He uses two-compartment tanks when needed to gain a little edge
in marginal conditions. He’ll also use concrete tanks if necessary
in some of the rockier soils in Missouri.
He calls his systems “conventional
with a little adaptation.” Dittmer uses chambers set in clean,
inch-and-a-half rock instead of just burying the chambers in soil.
When needed, he’ll get more filtration by adding a filter fabric
around the gravel. “Little things like that are what we do to try to
make a better quality system,” he says. “Of course, it adds a little
cost. Sometimes we can sell it, sometimes we can’t.”
He sometimes installs dosing
systems with chambers. That’s not the norm, but he does it when
necessary to build a high-quality system. “We’ve had good luck with
it,” he says. “We found that using a pump system and dosing is very
effective.”
Tackling price-pushers
He is not a big believer in
drainfield size reduction. That has cost him some work, but he won’t
quote anything below 200 feet of drainfield trench even when others
will. “Of course, they beat you every time,” he says. “They charge
the customer more than they would have for 150 feet, but less than
I’d charge for 200 feet, and they beat me every time.” And some
times, the customer ends up calling him later.
“They say ‘He won’t return my
calls. I’m tired of messing with him,’” says Dittmer. In one case,
he upset a potential customer who had selected another installer and
had problems with the system. “I asked if it was worth the $400
difference, and he hung up on me,” Dittmer recalls.
 Some
installers, he says, will give a low estimate, then charge to fix
problems the customer runs into. “When it’s all said and done, the
customer has a lower-quality system and has paid as much as I would
have charged him up front,” Dittmer says.
Dittmer was able to solve a long-
standing problem with a system that just wouldn’t work, even though
the county had ordered a certain design for the undersized lot. “The
builder just did what he had to do, and they tried to make it all
gravity,” he says. “In order to make it fit the lot, they put in a
drainage well. It never did work right. It failed and it failed and
it failed.”
Eventually, a neighbor granted an
easement for 100 feet of additional lateral so the system could be
made to work, but the easement was good only for the current owner.
Tragically, the owner was killed in a car accident last year, ending
the easement. So the survivors couldn’t sell the house because it
didn’t have a working septic system.
Doing it right
They called Dittmer to solve the
problem, and it ended up being both costly and complicated. He added
an Aqua Safe aerobic treatment unit from Ecological Tanks Inc., with
a pump tank, a 1,500 square-foot drainage bed that had to be
installed partially over the old bed, and a 1,000-gallon septic
tank. It was expensive, but it works.
Another customer was so happy when
Dittmer solved a long-standing problem with another installer’s
system that he sent a Christmas card. “Thanks so much for all your
excellent work on our septic system,” the customer wrote. “No
complaints from the neighbors, no flashing red lights, and no
audible alarms!”
Dittmer says his reputation for
professionalism and integrity — and for doing it right — has helped
his company. “When I tell someone it’s so many dollars, it’s so many
dollars, unless there’s just a terrible difference,” he says. “I try
to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Dittmer doesn’t think Missouri is
as tough as other states when it comes to regulations, but he
believes the state has done a great deal and is getting better.
“I don’t like regulations any more
than anybody else,” he says. “But when installers won’t try to do
what’s right, when all they’re interested in is getting the job,
putting money in their pocket and running, you’re going to need some
rules. And that’s what I’ve been fighting for for several years.”
Level playing field
That fight has included testifying
before legislative hearings in his trademark cap, and working with
MSO and his local legislator to beat down efforts to kill the
registration and education requirements. “Of course we fought that,”
he says. “I do not have a problem with competition as long as it’s
good competition.”
The rules, he says, help put
everyone on the same page. But counties still have the right to set
their own regulations, and that causes some problems. Dittmer
Ditching works in five counties within a 50-mile radius, so he works
with five different sets of rules. “That’s what makes our job so
tough. You have all these different rules.”
Dittmer gets upset thinking about
installers who “just throw it in and bury it.” In his view, “It’s
got to be right. If it’s supposed to be level, it has to be level.
If it’s supposed to have a certain degree of fall, it has to have
that certain degree of fall. And if it takes a few more minutes to
tweak it out, that’s what happens.”
As he states on his web site, “The
bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low
prices is forgotten.” |
