Septic quote comparison worksheet
Septic proposals are hard to compare because they are rarely offers for the same work. One includes restoration and one does not. One includes the permit fee. One assumes the tank is pumped separately. The prices differ, and it looks like a difference in rate when it is a difference in scope.
This lays them out on the same rows. It does not score them, rank them, or tell you which is best — the useful output is the empty cells.
Nothing entered yet.
Who and what
Filled in by you, kept in your browser. Nothing here is sent anywhere or checked against anything.
| Field | Proposal 1 |
|---|---|
| What do they say is wrong? A proposal with no diagnosis is a price for work, not a solution to a problem. | |
| How was it established? Pumped and inspected, probed, camera, excavated, or taken from what you told them. |
Scope
What physically happens. A difference in price is usually a difference in this section rather than a difference in rate.
| Field | Proposal 1 |
|---|---|
| In their words, not summarised. | |
| Backfill only, graded, topsoil, seeded, or nothing. This is the most common silence. | |
Who is responsible
Each of these is a task somebody has to do. If a proposal does not say who, the answer tends to be you, discovered late.
| Field | Proposal 1 |
|---|---|
| Route for machinery, what has to be moved, what will be crossed. | |
Terms
What happens when the ground is open and something unexpected appears.
| Field | Proposal 1 |
|---|---|
| Does work stop for your approval, and how is extra work priced? | |
| Your figure, entered by you. We do not publish price benchmarks and nothing here is compared against one. | |
How to use what it shows you
The comparison is not really between the numbers at the bottom. It is between the rows where one column is filled and another is blank.
- Start with diagnosis and evidence. Two proposals solving different problems are not comparable at any price, and the cheaper one may be cheap because it is fixing something smaller than what is actually wrong.
- Then look for “Not stated”. Every one of those is a decision that has not been made yet, and undecided items in septic work tend to resolve as change orders.
- Then compare like for like. If one proposal excludes restoration and disposal, add those back before you compare the figures — or ask for them to be priced.
- Send the gaps back as one written message. You will get better answers than on a call, and the answers are in writing.
What this worksheet deliberately does not do
- It does not score or rank contractors. We have no basis to, and a score would imply one.
- It does not treat the lowest price as the winner. In septic work the lowest figure is most often the narrowest scope.
- It does not compare your figures against a benchmark, because we do not publish price figures and a national average would tell you nothing about your site.
- It does not check anything about the contractors. Verifying licensing and insurance is a separate exercise, and the contractor selection standard covers what to ask for.
Common questions about the worksheet
Is anything I type here sent anywhere?
No. There is no network request in this tool at all — no submission, no autosave, no analytics payload built from what you type. The only thing analytics records is that the worksheet was opened and printed, with no values attached.
Will it still be here if I close the tab?
No, and that is the trade-off for storing nothing. Keeping contractor names and quoted prices would mean saving them somewhere, and we would rather not hold that. Print or save as PDF before you leave — the printed layout is designed for it.
Does it tell me which quote is best?
No. It does not score, rank or pick a winner, and it deliberately does not treat the lowest price as the best proposal. Its whole purpose is to show you where the proposals differ so you can ask about the gaps.
Why is there no benchmark price to compare against?
Because a septic price that is not tied to your access, depth, soil, scope and local requirements is misleading rather than helpful, and it gets used as a negotiating anchor against you. We do not publish price figures anywhere on this site.
What if I only have one quote?
The worksheet is still useful with one column: filling it in shows you the questions the proposal has not answered. That list is what you send back to the contractor before you accept.