It is rare to find someone who has grown up in the septic business since childhood. Matt Walker’s earliest memories were riding along on his grandfather’s lap, while his grandfather operated a backhoe to move rock and pipes around the property of their septic business. By the age of 12, Matt was able to operate a backhoe and then progressed to operate skid steers and excavators when he was 16. During those teenage years, he was often handed a shovel and taught how to install septic systems the hard way, without a laser level and installing rock systems. Shoveling rocks back in the day was a lot harder than the polyethylene material used in today’s septic installations, but Matt learned what was needed to get the job done.  

Matt’s septic teachings began through on-the-job experience. He learned everything about standard septic systems, from the correct amount of fall that a discharge pipe from a house or building needs to have to enter a septic tank, to leveling a septic tank correctly. He learned the importance of leveling the header/manifold pipe to allow for even distribution of flow into the drainfield before giving the drain field with the right amount of fall for proper drainage. He then went on to make a career out of septic and obtained his CDL license, septic contractor’s license, and many certificates for installing and maintaining advanced treatment systems, such as: HOOT, FUJI and NORWECO.

Matt drove a pump truck for over 5 years of his career and pumped an average of 20 tanks per week without assistance, adding up to thousands of tanks pumped over the years. He knows how to open tanks without damage and also knows when it is necessary to open both sides of a tank for a thorough cleaning. In the early 2000’s, it was common for many septic companies across Florida to install EASYFLOW styrofoam systems, which were cheaper to install, but ended up not functioning very well in terms of wastewater drainage. Matt has a lot of experience in removing these cheaper styrofoam systems, which involves excavating the material, loading it into a construction container, treating it with lime, and hauling it to a county waste facility. Sometimes this process must be done in tight areas and Matt has the expertise to accomplish this with minimal damage to the property.  

In more recent years, Matt has serviced hundreds of lift stations. Correctly identifying the issue to prevent additional costs and failures is something he takes pride in. Other technicians working in the industry without years of experience tend to just replace a pump without taking the time to find the cause. The cause of these issues and/or failures could be many. A structure leak, control panel programming issue, check value malfunction, broken or deteriorated concrete, float value malfunction or a roof drip line that causes excessive water to drain onto the septic system are just some of the issues that can arise. Matt strives to find the cause of the issues/failures and salvage the pump or system at minimal cost.

There are situations where Matt finds himself on a job site that needs repair because of past mistakes made by other septic technicians. By utilizing the skills he has obtained in over 20 years of experience, Matt will perform high quality service work so that neither he, nor others have to correct any of these preventable issues in the future. His goal is to help customers prevent emergency situations and correct their septic issues permanently.