Drain Field Repair in North Carolina, NC

• Union County page: how the county's Environmental Health division handles repair requests, its records and its fee page, and soils such as Badin and Cid.
• Johnston County page: the county's repair permit and dated fee schedule, its pump-system inspections, and wet Coastal Plain soils such as Rains.
• This guide links only the North Carolina counties with pages on this site. Elsewhere, the county's local health department is the place to start. Cornelia Cove LLC does not issue permits and does not speak for DHHS or any health department.

• Repairing or replacing a dispersal field under an Improvement Permit and Construction Authorization, or under the engineered option or AOWE route
• Replacing a damaged gravity distribution box, which is not a repair under G.S. 130A-334(9a) when a certified on-site wastewater contractor does it
• Repair designs built on a licensed soil scientist's evaluation of soil conditions and site features, or a licensed geologist's evaluation of geologic and hydrogeologic conditions, under G.S. 130A-335(a1) and (a2), which the permitting authorities approve if the work is inside the evaluator's licensed scope and the evaluator holds errors and omissions coverage, sized to the risk, from a Chapter 58-licensed insurer
• Abandoning a field that cannot be repaired, which Rule 18E .1306(f) takes out of use and sends to the abandonment steps of Rule .1307
• Connecting a house to a city or county sewer line instead of repairing

• Soil texture and field size: Rule 18E .0901(c) assigns a long-term acceptance rate (LTAR) from Table XVII for soil or Table XVIII for saprolite, based on textural class, structure, consistence, soil wetness, depth, coarse rock, landscape position, topography and system type, and the rule's sizing criteria are based on soil receiving domestic-strength effluent. Table XVII runs from 0.8 to 1.2 gallons per day per square foot for Group I sands down to 0.1 to 0.4 for Group IV clays, and a facility generating high-strength effluent or with a full kitchen may not exceed the mean rate for its Soil Group.
• Which permit route: the local health department route, the engineered option (designed by a licensed professional engineer with on-site wastewater expertise, per G.S. 130A-334(1h)) and the AOWE route each carry their own design, inspection and filing duties under G.S. 130A-336.1, 130A-336.2 and 130A-337.
• Contractor level: G.S. 90A-72(a) requires the installing contractor to be certified at the level required for the specified system.
• Fees are set locally; the county pages show what Union and Johnston publish.

• Before cover and use: a new or repaired system stays uncovered and out of service, under G.S. 130A-337(a), until the local health department has inspected it and found the installation or repair consistent with the Improvement Permit, the Construction Authorization, the rules and the statute. Subsections (a1) and (a2) allow verification by an AOWE, a licensed engineer or a certified Private Compliance Inspector instead, each with written-verification, insurance or filing conditions the statute lists; check those subsections before choosing one. Occupying the building, or putting the system into use or reuse, waits for an operation permit under subsection (d), or for the written authorization subsection (c) provides in a manufactured home park.
• Repair deadline: under Rule 18E .1306(a)-(c), when a system is malfunctioning or otherwise needs repair, the local health department or the Department issues a written notice of violation (NOV), and the repair is due 30 days from the date printed on it. The NOV may set another time frame based on site-specific factors; the rule's examples are how severe the repair is, wastewater backing up into a restaurant or discharging into SA waters, and bad weather that holds up construction. Unless maintenance alone restores compliance, the owner files a repair application under Section .0200, and the finished repair has to eliminate any public health hazard. Paragraph (c)(2) also offers a best professional judgement repair on a Department form, with limits and owner obligations stated in the rule; ask the health department about it.
• Which rules apply: under Rule 18E .0102(a), a system that already held an approval (an IP, CA, operation permit or equivalent) before January 1, 2024 stays outside 18E until its design daily flow or wastewater strength goes up, while systems malfunctioning under Rule .1303(a)(2) must follow 18E and Rule .0206 applies to systems with pre-2024 operation approvals. Under .0102(f), Section .1300 (operation and maintenance) applies to every system. The Johnston County page covers the component-reuse provisions of .0102(g) and (h).
• Certification: G.S. 90A-72(a) bars anyone from constructing, installing or repairing, or offering to, a permitted on-site wastewater system without certification as a contractor at the level required for that system, and also requires certification to conduct inspections, AOWE evaluations and private compliance inspections, as that subsection details. The certification board's page says that, effective 1/1/25, all applicants for certification must pass an exam, and that applying for Grade Level IV installer requires holding a satisfactory Grade Level II installer certification for at least two years and completing the Advance to GL IV class.

• Soil groups: Table IV in Rule 18E .0503 sorts suitable textures into Group I sands (sand, loamy sand), Group II coarse loams (sandy loam, loam), Group III fine loams (sandy clay loam, silt loam, clay loam, silty clay loam, silt) and Group IV clays (sandy clay, silty clay, clay).
• Soil wetness: Rule .0504 reads soil wetness conditions, such as a seasonal high or perched water table, tidal water or lateral water movement, from field indicators. Under .0504(b), a site where that condition is less than 12 inches below the naturally occurring soil surface, or less than 18 inches if more than six inches of Group I soils are present, is unsuitable with respect to soil wetness, though paragraph (c) allows monitoring or modeling under the rule to reclassify the site as suitable.
• Piedmont rock: NRCS describes the Badin series (see the Union County page) as moderately deep, well drained soils on Piedmont uplands whose parent material is residuum weathered from the Carolina Slate Belt's fine-grained metasedimentary and metavolcanic rock; depth to weathered bedrock is 20 to 40 inches.
• Coastal Plain water: the Rains series (see the Johnston County page) is a poorly drained soil whose official description places it on flats, depressions and Carolina bays of the middle and upper coastal plain, and puts its seasonal high water table between the surface and 12 inches down, December through April.

Union County · Johnston County · Monroe · Indian Trail · Smithfield