Cesspool to Septic Conversion in Pahoa, HI

Cesspool Conversion in Pahoa

Hawaii has set a deadline for every cesspool in the state to be converted or closed, and nowhere does that land harder than East Hawaii, where whole subdivisions were built on cesspools drilled into the lava. A conversion means closing the pit and installing a permitted individual wastewater system in its place: typically a septic tank with a leach field or seepage bed, or an aerobic treatment unit where the lot is too small or too wet for a conventional field. We handle cesspool-to-septic conversions across Hilo, Puna and the Hamakua coast, from the site evaluation and the design that the Department of Health requires through the excavation, the tank and field installation, and the final inspection. Lava changes everything about this work. There is little or no soil, so most fields here are built on imported fill, and a lot that looks flat and easy may sit on a lava tube or on pahoehoe that will not break without a hammer. We look at your lot first, tell you which system actually fits it, and give you a real number before anything is dug.

Cesspool and septic service in Pahoa

Pahoa is the main street of lower Puna, an old plantation town of raised wooden storefronts where Highway 130 ends and the roads to Kalapana, Pohoiki and Kapoho begin. Everything around it is unsewered. Nanawale Estates and Leilani Estates to the east, Kalapana Seaview Estates toward the coast, the farm lots along Highway 132 and the homes scattered up the old lava flows all run on a cesspool or a septic system, and most of them catch their own rainwater. Lower Puna is also where the 2018 eruption rewrote the map: Leilani Estates lost whole streets, Kapoho and its tide pools are gone, and the rebuilding that followed went in on new septic systems because new construction cannot use a cesspool. That leaves Pahoa with the full spread of what we do, from pumping a forty-year-old pit behind a plantation house to installing a permitted system on a fresh lot, with home-sale inspections in between as the area turns over. The ground here is some of the youngest on the island, a mix of a‘a that drains like a sieve and pahoehoe that will not take a shovel, which shapes every conversion. We work Pahoa and the subdivisions around it every week. Tell us the subdivision and the road and we will give you a straight answer and a real price.

• Site evaluation and system recommendation for your lot and household
• Design and Department of Health permit handled for you
• Septic tank with leach field or seepage bed, or an aerobic treatment unit where needed
• Raised beds on imported fill for lots with no native soil
• Old cesspool pumped, closed and filled to code
• Final inspection and the paperwork a buyer or lender asks for

Need cesspool conversion elsewhere? See all of our Pahoa services or cesspool conversion across East Hawaii.