If you own an aerobic septic system in Texas, state law requires you to maintain it — for most owners, that means a paid contract with a TCEQ-licensed maintenance provider, with system checks reported to your county at least every 4 months. Published pricing spans $200 to $600 per year across Dillon Septic’s own 2026 pages. This guide covers what the law actually demands, what a compliant contract must spell out, and the part nobody explains well: how to change providers without opening a compliance gap.
| Quick stat | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Contract required for aerobic systems | Yes — statutory | Tex. Health & Safety Code §366.0515; 30 TAC §285.7 |
| Reporting frequency | Every 4 months (every 6 with approved electronic monitoring) | TCEQ OSSF maintenance guidance; 30 TAC §285.91(4) |
| Typical contract cost | $200–$600/yr (span of Dillon’s published pages) | Dillon Septic (2026) |
| Who can hold the contract | A licensed Maintenance Provider (an individual, not a company) | TCEQ |
Yes — Texas Health & Safety Code §366.0515 and 30 TAC §285.7 require ongoing maintenance for aerobic treatment units, and for most owners that obligation is met through a contract with a TCEQ-licensed Maintenance Provider. This isn’t a county quirk or an installer upsell; it’s state law, enforced through your county’s permitting office, which receives the inspection reports.
Two nuances the summary version skips. First, the license belongs to a person: TCEQ licenses individual Maintenance Providers and no longer registers maintenance companies, so your contract must name the licensed individual responsible for your system. This detail matters when a company’s only licensed provider leaves. Second, there’s a homeowner exception: two years after initial installation, state rules allow owners to maintain certain systems themselves — but counties can and do impose stricter local rules, from required training to outright prohibition. Check with your county before assuming the DIY door is open; we’re building the county-by-county answer into its own guide.
TCEQ requires five things in writing: what’s covered, how fast the provider must respond to your complaints, the name of the licensed individual doing the work, the inspection/testing/reporting schedule, and who maintains the disinfection unit. Straight from the state’s guidance, a compliant contract specifies:
Read the covered-items list the way you’d read an insurance policy. “Three inspections per year” is the floor the state sets; whether a failed float switch, a spray head, or an aerator rebuild is included is the difference between a $400 contract and a $400 contract plus $900 of surprises.
The provider inspects every component, tests what 30 TAC §285.91(4) requires, marks the tag on your system as proof of the visit, and files a report with both you and your county within 14 days. The punch-tag on the tank is the analog audit trail — each visit, including complaint calls, gets marked. The report to the permitting authority is the digital one: your county knows whether your system is being maintained, which is precisely how lapsed contracts surface.
If the visit finds a failed component, the finding goes in the report and the repair obligation lands on you. Systems with an approved electronic monitor — one that automatically notifies the provider of failures and tracks disinfection — qualify for reporting every 6 months instead of every 4, with the provider responsible for keeping the monitoring itself working. Fewer visits, same accountability.
One thing the visit is not: a pump-out. Contracts cover inspection and testing; sludge removal is billed separately when measurements call for it, at normal Texas pumping rates. A provider who tracks your sludge level across visits and tells you before it’s urgent is delivering exactly what the contract is for.
Dillon Septic’s own published pages span $200–$600 a year — $200–$400 on its general cost guide, $300–$600 on its aerobic-specific page — with the first year commonly bundled into the new system’s installation price. No trustworthy statewide price survey exists, so treat that as a Hill Country anchor: metro competition pulls prices down, thin rural coverage pushes them up, and multi-system or premium contracts (parts included, priority response) run higher.
The pay-per-visit math rarely wins. Three required visits a year, bought individually as service calls, typically cost more than the bundled contract before you’ve priced the reporting paperwork — and unlike a lapsed Netflix subscription, a lapsed septic contract generates a compliance record at the county. Where the real money hides is component coverage: a contract $100 cheaper that excludes all parts is more expensive the first time a $250 float switch fails. Price the whole clause, not the headline.
For what the system itself costs to buy and run, see our aerobic cost guide — the contract is one line of a $400–$1,050 annual operating budget.
Your county finds out — the reporting system is designed so they do — and consequences scale from a compliance letter to citations and fines under the Health and Safety Code. When reports stop arriving, the county’s file on your system goes quiet, and quiet files get follow-up. Enforcement intensity varies by county, but the pattern is consistent: counties that administer the OSSF program investigate complaints and pursue systems out of compliance (Kerr County, for example, investigated 83 complaints in 2024 — its office treats maintenance lapses as exactly the kind of thing that becomes a nuisance case later).
Two lapse scenarios deserve special care. New installs: some counties set an initial contract term as a permit condition — Gillespie County’s current order requires a two-year initial term — so dropping a contract early can violate the permit itself, not just the maintenance rule. Home sales: the contract doesn’t automatically follow the deed. Buyers should get the existing contract’s status, transfer or replace it at closing, and file whatever transfer paperwork the county requires. A house with an aerobic system and no active contract is a compliance problem being sold at asking price.
Line up the new contract to start the day the old one ends, tell the new provider to file with the county immediately, and confirm the county shows continuous coverage — in that order. Nobody covers this well, so here’s the sequence that works:
Switching is also the moment to renegotiate what’s covered. Providers price loyalty poorly and new business well — the same company will often write a better parts clause for a new customer than a renewal.
Yes. Texas Health & Safety Code §366.0515 and 30 TAC §285.7 require maintenance on aerobic systems, met through a contract with a TCEQ-licensed Maintenance Provider — with a narrow homeowner-maintenance exception starting two years after installation, where the county allows it. Counties can be stricter than the state, and several are.
Testing and reporting at least every 4 months — three times a year — dropping to every 6 months only if the system has approved electronic monitoring that auto-notifies your provider of failures. Reports go to both you and your county within 14 days of each test (TCEQ; 30 TAC §285.91(4)).
$200–$600 a year — the span across Dillon Septic’s own published 2026 pages (general guide $200–$400; aerobic page $300–$600) — with the first year often included in a new install. Watch the covered-items clause more than the price — parts coverage is where cheap contracts get expensive.
At the top of the published range, $600 should buy something visible — parts coverage, priority response, or a premium service tier; for a bare three-visit contract, get competing quotes. Any licensed provider can service any brand they’re qualified on, so you’re not captive to the installer’s price.
It doesn’t transfer automatically — the buyer needs the contract assigned or replaced at closing, with the change filed at the county, or the system’s compliance record breaks on day one of their ownership. Counties handle the paperwork differently: Kerr County uses a transfer-of-registration form; Gillespie ties new installs to a two-year initial contract that survives the sale. Sellers: a current contract with a clean report history is cheap proof your system works. Buyers: make contract status a closing item, right next to the pump-out receipt.
Sometimes — state rules open homeowner maintenance two years after installation for qualifying systems. Still, your county may require training or prohibit it entirely, and you take over the same testing and reporting obligations. For most owners, the contract costs less than the time; for the determined, start by asking your county what it actually allows.
The directory advantage: every Maintenance Provider listed on our county pages is license-verified against TCEQ’s registry — the credential this entire page runs on. Find yours through your county hub.
Regulatory requirements above quote TCEQ’s published OSSF maintenance guidance and the underlying law — Tex. Health & Safety Code §366.0515, 30 TAC §285.7, §285.90(3), §285.91(4) — accessed July 30, 2026. Contract pricing anchors to named, dated provider publishing (Dillon Septic, 2026); no statewide contract-price survey met our sourcing bar, and this page says so. County enforcement examples come from county-published program data (Kerr, Gillespie). Where a figure can’t be traced to a source, it isn’t on this page.
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