The Chocorua Lake basin is six thousand acres on the National Register, ninety-five percent of it under conservation covenant, with summer houses that go back to the 1880s. When one of those sells, the state wants a septic site assessment. The buyer should want a lot more than that.
Chocorua Lake is 220 acres, twelve feet deep on average, and no motor of any kind has been allowed on it since the early seventies. The families who built around it after the railroad reached West Ossipee were the kind who had Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt to visit, and the houses they built are still there, mostly. Big, rambling, and in a lot of cases stitched together out of two or three older buildings hauled to the site. The Chocorua Lake Conservancy’s covenants generally hold subdivisions to eight-acre pieces, so these places don’t turn over often. When they do, the buyer is usually from away, the price is what it is, and the septic system is somewhere under a century of lawn.
The state rule is simple enough. Chocorua Lake, White Lake, Great Hill Pond and Moores Pond are all public waters, so a developed lot inside the protected shoreland needs an RSA 485-A:39 site assessment before it sells. That assessment is a form. It answers whether the lot could support a system built to today’s standards. It does not tell you whether the system that’s there works, how many tanks there are, or which building each one serves.
That last question is the one we’ve learned to ask in the basin. A house that was three buildings in 1910 may have three plumbing stacks, and we’ve found more than one tank on the same lot, one of them serving a wing nobody uses anymore and none of them on a drawing. Off the lake it’s a different problem: Tamworth has no building code and never has, so there’s no town file on any house in town, and the seller’s disclosure is the only record until we open the lid.
On a Chocorua basin house, ask the seller which building the tank is under, then ask if they’re sure. The second answer is the one you want in the report.
We pump the tank first, always. You can’t inspect a full one. Then we check the tank itself for cracks and for steel, look at both baffles, run a camera from the house to the tank and out to the distribution box, and load the field with water to see whether it takes it. On a basin property we also walk the whole footprint of the house with the locator, because the tank we were told about is not always the only one.
You get a written report with photos the same day: what the system is, roughly how old, what it’s serving, what’s wrong and what isn’t, and a plain opinion on how long it’s got. If the seller has a state approval number we’ll pull the drawing. If they don’t — common here — we’ll tell you what that means for the price.
If you need the 485-A:39 assessment as well, it’s a separate item, quick to do while we’re on site, and we’ll fill it out and sign it so the closing isn’t waiting on it.
A full inspection with pumping, camera and field load runs a set price we’ll give you when you book. The shoreland site assessment is quoted separately and is usually the smaller number. Lender-required paperwork and a written report are included.
If the lot is developed and inside the protected shoreland, yes — RSA 485-A:39 requires it before the sale closes. Same for White Lake, Great Hill Pond and Moores Pond. It’s a site suitability form, not a working inspection. We do both, and we’d recommend both.
It’s a start. Ask for the NHDES approval number and the as-built drawing. If the seller has them, great, we’ll check what’s in the ground against the paper. If they don’t, “updated” could mean a new lid. In a town with no building code, the paper is the only proof.
Because it used to be more than one house. A good many of the summer places around Chocorua Lake were assembled from moved buildings, each with its own plumbing, and the tanks got added as the plumbing did. We sweep the whole site with a locator so nothing gets left off the report.
Plan on two to three hours on site for a normal house, longer for a big basin property where we’re searching for tanks. The report goes out the same day. If the sale is on a clock, tell us the closing date when you call and we’ll work to it.
They can, and it’s kind of them, but it costs us the sludge reading, which is the best evidence of how the tank’s been used. If you’re the buyer, ask them to leave it and let us pump. If you’re the seller, same advice — the report reads better when it’s complete.
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