Stop the source
Stop running water anywhere in the house — no flushing, no laundry, no dishwasher, no long showers. Every gallon that goes down a drain is a gallon pushing the backup further into the house.
Septic pumping call line & the Pee Dee homeowner's bulletin
Stop running water in the house. Do not flush, do not run the dishwasher or washing machine, and keep everyone away from any sewage that has surfaced indoors or in the yard. If the backup is happening now, telephone an independent local septic professional directly — this is not a situation to leave for a web form and a callback.
Call (843) 919-4664 nowStop running water anywhere in the house — no flushing, no laundry, no dishwasher, no long showers. Every gallon that goes down a drain is a gallon pushing the backup further into the house.
Raw sewage carries bacteria and other pathogens. Keep children and pets out of the affected room or yard, avoid direct contact, and wash thoroughly if contact happens before it's cleaned up.
An active backup is not a submit-a-form-and-wait situation. Telephone an independent local septic professional directly at (843) 919-4664 so a live person can act on it.
If the tank hasn't been pumped in years, sludge and scum can crowd out the working liquid space until the system simply has nowhere left to send incoming wastewater.
Roots, grease, or a collapsed section of pipe between the house and the tank can stop flow completely, even in a tank that isn't full.
If the drainfield can't accept water — often worse after heavy rain — wastewater has nowhere to go and returns toward the house, tank condition aside.
Say where the sewage is showing up — a specific drain, the lowest point in the house, or over the tank or drainfield outdoors — and whether it followed heavy rain.
The call connects you with an independent local septic professional who handles emergency calls. Scheduling and any details about arrival are theirs to confirm directly with you.
The independent contractor assesses the cause on site and agrees on the work and price directly with you before starting — the same as any septic visit, urgent or not.
Stop using water in the house entirely — no flushing, no laundry, no dishwasher — and call an independent local septic professional directly rather than waiting on a callback. Adding more water only pushes the backup further into the house.
Call. An active backup is not a wait-for-a-callback situation; a phone call reaches a live person who can act on it.
Raw sewage carries bacteria and other pathogens. Keep children and pets away from the affected area, avoid direct contact, and wash thoroughly if you do touch anything, until it's cleaned up by someone equipped to do it.
For a single slow drain, maybe. But if multiple drains are backing up at once, or the lowest drain in the house is the one backing up, that's usually a tank or drainfield issue a plunger cannot reach.
Sewage surfacing over the tank or drainfield outdoors is still an active backup — treat it the same way: stop adding water indoors and call.
If your address is served by one of Florence County's seven public water and wastewater entities — Florence, Johnsonville, Lake City, Coward, Olanta, Pamplico, or Scranton — you may be on public sewer rather than septic. Outside those footprints, septic is the norm. If you are not sure, say so when you call.
No permit is needed to diagnose or pump a backed-up tank. If the cause turns out to be a failed component that needs repair or replacement, South Carolina requires a permit from SCDES before that work begins.
That depends on the cause, which is exactly what gets assessed on site. Clemson Cooperative Extension publishes homeowner guidance on septic failures worth reading once the immediate emergency has passed.
No. Septic Florence is a referral line, not a septic contractor. The call connects you with an independent local septic professional who handles the visit, the assessment, and the price directly with you.
Call anyway. Whether someone can respond outside normal hours is a question for the independent professional you're connected with, not something this page can promise.
Backups don't wait for business hours or county lines. This call line reaches the parts of Florence County and the surrounding Pee Dee that sit outside the county's seven public water and wastewater systems, where septic is how the wastewater gets handled at all.