Sweet Associates

We had worked with Sweet Associates years ago and were happy to see they were still available to do our new job.  We had a septic issue and they came and helped discover the problem and solve it.

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Dick was very knowledgeable and answered all my question confidently. I was having the pre-sale inspection done of the house and was worried due to the systems age/size that it may need to be replaced. He reassured me that it was functioning properly and as long as I didn't overuse the system it would continue to function for some time.

I did the inspection because it is an old house. They were great. They are actually a septic designer; they design them for commercial as well as domestic so they knew a lot about it. I hired them because a friend of mine recommended them. I called around to a bunch of different regular septic companies who could do the inspection to get prices but they all wanted to pump the tank. There was a deal on my house before I got involved and the tank had already been pumped so I knew it was not needed again. But, these guys told me they did not want it to be pumped so I was happy and hired them. They had all sorts of technical information but very useful. They were personable. I was there when they did the inspection and they entertained all my questions and answered them in a manner that was easy to understand. I would call them a septic engineer. They were just really great and gave me the peace of mind that what I was buying is okay. When a septic tank has to be pumped up the whole front part of it has to be dug up and would have costed me thousands of dollars like $5,000 to $6,000 and that is not the kind of thing that anyone would want to spend on right after buying a house. Their prices were worth paying for.

I thought they were very professional and really knew their stuff. They design high end systems but not the implementation. They were recommended to me. I was very happy with them.

I am not an expert in septic system design. Therefore, I hired a highly respected septic system designer as my advocate and to do the site analysis and design for its installation. Dick Sweet seemed to be very knowledgable and helpful.
However, there seem to be two primary concerns in septic system design; the nature of the ground underneath it and the elevations or altitude of the ground relative to house site. Mr Sweet forgot to relate the elevation of his designed septic field to the surveyed elevations of the house site. There is no numerical relationship shown in his drawings, just his bench mark. As designed and installed, the inlet to the septic tank from the house was two feet above grade and the sanitary pipe would have run about a foot above my living room floor!
I made several phoned requests to Mr.Sweet for corrected design drawings. He made no comment and never responded. I and my installer re-suveyed the site area in question and designed and installed a corrected system incorporating a low boy septic tank chopped into the ledge and a pump for an additional cost of about $5000. Mr.Sweet still did not respond. In September and again in November I send him a long letter detailing the issues and included a copy of my installed invoice and a request he cover the re-work cost. The November letter was and quot;return receiptand quot; thus he did receive it.
Even competent professionals make errors. What is truly telling is what they do to remedy the error. Ignoring a client's legitimate design problem is not ethical and questionably legal. As a professional in my own field, I strongly CANNOT recommend Richard Sweet.
Do not hire him.

Overall, went very well. He even took the extra time to show me that we needed to do this sooner rather than later, explained why and explained limited but workable remedy.