FREESTATE SEPTIC SERVICE

F+++++++ I would not hire them again to pick up dog ****. They destroyed the entire back yard. They did a horrible job of clearing the stones and leveling of the yard and cleaning some old parts. We had to hire people to level the yard, prepare the yard for seed. This company is a joke and so unprofessional.

Very good. Showed up and did the work. Prompt response and billing. Will hire again.

As a condition for purchasing the house we now have in Upper Marlboro, some repairs had to be done. This included fixing a crack in the main septic line leading from the house. Freestate Septic was hired (by either the real estate agent or the owners) to pump the septic tank and repair the pipe. Two months later, during the night of hurricane Irene, we slept in shifts because this repair was leaking a gallon a minute. This pipe is located in a basement wall, about two feet above the floor. We were able to rig tin foil to direct most of the water into a large bucket, which we emptied every three minutes. (In our location, we had no damage from the hurricane, just rain---and downed power lines so there was no electricity for the sump pump, though I don?t think the pump could have handled this volume.)

I called Freestate on Monday morning. Their opinion was the wall probably had to be ?parged.? (The application of a waterproof coating on the outside of the wall.) However, in the aftermath of the hurricane, they were too busy with new jobs to come out and do any warranty work on an old job. They wouldn?t be able to come out until the following week. They offered no opinion on why they had not parged it to begin with.

The following weekend arrived with forecasts of rain for the entire week. We couldn?t wait for Freestate to come ?look at it,? so we bought the waterproofing material to parge it ourselves and started digging Sunday afternoon. The patch job was so bad we could not parge it. Rather than use hydraulic cement, they used concrete with large aggregate pieces. It was too pitted and rough to paint the waterproofing on. We went to Home Depot when they opened the next day, Labor Day, and bought hydraulic cement and applied it inside and out, over their rough job. (We have a ?before? picture of a large screwdriver buried nearly to its hilt in the space between the pipe and the concrete.) After we replaced the dirt in the four-and-a-half foot hole we dug, we ended up nine inches short of ground level. We compressed the dirt as we backfilled; obviously, they had not. This meant the soil in the entire area around their bad patch was less dense than the surrounding soil, so water gravitated to it, then into the house.
The rain started as we were finishing, and didn?t let up for four days. Upper Marlboro was flooded. You?ve probably seen pictures; new cars in the dealer?s lot up to their roofs in water; Water Street underwater. Roads were closed. Freestate was to have called that week.

They did not.

Nor did they call the next week.

I finally called them. They apologized, but offered us nothing for our time, labor, and expense. It?s a free market, so that?s their choice.

This is a long-time family owned local business, always responsive and careful work.