Out here the first plumbing question is where the water starts and where it ends. Fairfax County’s Health Department shows active septic permits on about 3,000 properties with a Fairfax Station address and private well permits on about 1,700, and almost every one of those well houses drains to septic as well. Most sit west of Ox Road, along roads like Hampton, Henderson, Yates Ford and Wolf Run Shoals, where the county plans for one house per five to ten acres to protect the Occoquan and keeps much of the land outside the sewer area.
Crosspointe is the other Fairfax Station. Its 1990s streets barely register in either permit list, so those houses drain to the county sewer and drink Fairfax Water, and the county’s rules on the lateral and the pressure reducing valve, further down this page, are the ones that apply there.
A well house runs its own small water company in the basement: the pump down the well, a pressure tank, and a switch that decides when the pump runs. Those three belong to a well contractor. From the tank onward, the pipes, the fixtures, the water heater and every drain are plumbing, and that’s the part we work on. Tell us when you book whether the house is on a well; it changes what the tech checks first.
The houses themselves are mostly 1980s and 90s; about 8 in 10 homes in 22039 went up between 1980 and 1999. With four bedrooms or more in about 9 in 10 of them, supply runs are long, and a pinhole leak or a split fitting can sit above a finished basement ceiling for weeks before the drywall shows it.