Septic System Installation in Reidsville, NC

Which Homes Around Reidsville Use Septic Systems?

Reidsville is an older city, and half of its homes date from 1967 or earlier, by Census figures. The city's water system counts about 6,360 sewer connections, and its treatment plant discharges to the Haw River.

Outside the city, Rockingham County's planning office sends well and septic questions to Environmental Health. Questions about a public water or sewer line go to the county's Public Utilities. About one home in six across the county is a mobile home, by the same Census survey. Off the sewer lines, a new home site needs a septic permit, or a reconnect permit for an existing system.

Rockingham County Environmental Health and Your Septic Permits

Rockingham County Environmental Health permits septic systems across the county, Reidsville included. Its On-Site Wastewater Program evaluates the soil and site for new lots and for repairs. The specialist reads the soil profile from borings or pits, under the state rules in 15A NCAC 18E. Repairs go through similar steps, and the county exempts them from its permit fees.

The process starts with a site plan that shows the house, the driveway, any outbuildings and nearby creeks or wetlands. Before the specialist comes out, you mark the property lines and the house location in the field. The county also says it helps to clear heavy vegetation first. On a wooded lot, land clearing opens the ground for that visit.

The Improvement Permit says whether the site can take a system, and it can transfer to a new owner. The Construction Authorization shows the system type and where it goes, and it opens the door to the building permit. The county inspects the finished system before it is covered, then issues the Operation Permit. Electric power and a Certificate of Occupancy wait on that permit.

Reidsville Soils and What They Mean for a Drain Field

Clifford soil, with its red clay subsoil, covers about a third of the ground around Reidsville in the NRCS survey. Poplar Forest and Fairview come next, and all three weathered from rock like granite and gneiss. NRCS rates many of these map units very limited for drain fields, mostly for slope and slow water movement.

Siloam soils sit shallow over bedrock, and the creek bottoms flood. Rockingham County's Triassic basin soils lie along the Dan River, in the west and north of the county. The survey maps none of them around Reidsville. The county's soil evaluation on your lot decides the system, and our excavation equipment digs any pits it needs.

The county describes conventional trenches as 24 to 30 inches deep, 9 feet apart and on the contour. Where space or soil depth runs short, the county permits other types, such as low-pressure pipe or drip. In clay that drains slowly, NC State Extension says the drain field has to be larger. It also warns that digging soil that is too wet smears the trench walls and can seal them.

Lake Reidsville, the Jordan Lake Watershed and Site Rules

Lake Reidsville, on Troublesome Creek south of town, is the city's water supply. The state classes its watershed WS-III, with a critical area near the lake. Rockingham County adds watershed overlay rules with higher standards upstream of its drinking water supplies.

Over half of Reidsville drains to the Haw River arm of the Jordan Lake watershed, the county says. The rest of town drains to the Dan River through Wolf Island Creek and Hogans Creek. In the Jordan watershed, state rules protect a 50-foot buffer along streams and ponds. Septic rules keep a drain field at least 50 feet from a private well, and from a lake or stream.

A job that disturbs more than an acre also needs an erosion and sedimentation control plan. In Rockingham County, that plan goes to the state. Before any digging, NC 811 needs three full working days of notice to mark public utility lines. Once the system is in, land grading turns yard runoff away from the drain field.