Bealeton’s plumbing starts with its soil. Fauquier County’s plan says soil studies in the 1970s showed the ground couldn’t support septic drainfields, and it calls the local soils poor for percolation and very water retentive. So the subdivisions waited for the Fauquier County Water and Sanitation Authority to bring public water and a force main sewer up from Remington. Today Bealeton’s wastewater is pumped to the Authority’s treatment plant south of Remington, which also takes Remington’s and Opal’s.
That makes the pipe to the street a split responsibility. FCWSA keeps its mains clear, but everything from the main to your lot line, and on from the lot line to the foundation, belongs to you the way a faucet does; the Authority only repairs the stretch under a public street. On a backup, phone the Authority before anyone else. Its crew looks at the main, and if that’s flowing, the clog is yours, and a sewer camera inspection on the same visit, $89, finds it.
The water side splits at the meter box: the Authority’s pipe runs up to and through it, and the line onward to the house is the owner’s. FCWSA doesn’t promise even pressure, and over 80 psi its rules hand the owner the job of adding a pressure regulating valve. A gauge threaded onto an outside spigot answers that in a minute, and a new valve is $500 to $1,000 from our list.
At the far western edge of the service district the County keeps public water and sewer off a band of large lots on purpose, and past the district line, 22712 homes run on a well and a septic system. We handle the plumbing inside those houses: the water heater, the fixtures, the drains to the cleanout. The well, its pump and the septic tank go to licensed well and septic contractors.