Sewer Line Repair and Replacement Services

If you are needing sewer line repair or replacement in 2021, you’re in luck. Most sewer repairs today can be performed using minimally-invasive trenchless sewer repair methods such as pipe lining and pipe bursting.

Gone are the days when a major sewer repair took days, or even weeks, and involved digging up streets, driveways, and flower beds. Today’s trenchless sewer repair techniques enable us to repair damaged sewer pipes in just hours, with minimal digging. At the most, we’ll dig two 4ft by 4ft pits to access the pipe. Sometimes, we don’t need to dig at all.

Traditional sewer line replacement vs trenchless sewer line repair

Traditionally, sewer repair meant digging trenches, heavy excavation, and knocking down walls and digging up floors. It meant destroying property in an effort to access and repair the damaged pipe.

Today’s trenchless sewer pipe repair techniques haven’t completely eliminated these invasive sewer pipe repair methods, but they have come close. Trenchless sewer pipe repair methods are minimally-invasive. At the most two 4ft x 4ft pits are dug in order to access the pipe. The repair is completed in just hours rather than the days – or sometimes weeks – necessary to do a repair using traditional sewer pipe repair methods.

Trenchless sewer line repair can be used for…

  • Pipes under residential homes, apartment buildings, and expensive landscaping
  • Vertical stacks in multi-story buildings
  • Lateral lines that connect buildings, or homes, to city sewers or septic tanks
  • Installing water lines to residential homes
  • Repairing broken, cracked, or blocked pipes whether they be cast iron, clay, lead, or plastic
  • Repairing pipes that weren’t properly installed
  • Repairing pipes corroded by rust
  • Pipes that are slightly misaligned. (Pipe lining doesn’t realign pipes. However, it will smooth out any rough edges that could cause debris to get stuck.)

Cost of trenchless sewer line repair vs traditional sewer line repair

Even though trenchless sewer line repair can be up to 50% more expensive than traditional sewer line repair, it’s still cost-effective. Here’s why…

Trenchless sewer line repair doesn’t destroy your property. That means you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to put everything back together again. Therefore, the repair project actually ends up costing you less. Overall, minimally-invasive trenchless sewer line repair is far less stressful for homeowners.

Trenchless Sewer Line Repair Methods

Trenchless sewer line repair methods include structural pipe lining and pipe bursting. We’ll briefly go over these methods here. However, for more in-depth information we encourage you to visit the individual pages on our website for each of these techniques.

Trenchless Pipe Lining

Structural pipe lining – also known as just pipe lining or cured in place pipe (CIPP) – involves using a special epoxy to create a new pipe inside your old one.

The first step in pipe lining is a sewer camera inspection to see what’s going on inside the pipe. We look for cracks, breaks, blockages, tree roots, or anything else that might be causing a problem. After that, we use hydro jetting to clean the pipe of debris and sludge. The next step involves using the special epoxy to create a new pipe within the damaged one. After the epoxy cures for several hours, the new pipe is ready. Any branches that were covered over are reinstated, and one final sewer camera inspection completes the procedure.

Is pipe lining the same as slip lining?

No.

Slip lining is a different procedure that involves inserting a new, smaller, HDPE pipe into an older, larger pipe, usually made of corrugated metal or concrete. Slip lining is typically only done in large diameter city sewers where a significant reduction in pipe diameter is acceptable.

So, both pipe lining and slip lining result in a new pipe within the old pipe. But slip lining is only done with larger diameter pipes, not residential sewer lines.

Will pipe lining reduce the pipe’s diameter?

While pipe lining does slightly reduce the pipe’s diameter, the Hazen–Williams flow coefficient of a newly lined pipe is higher than that of the old cast iron pipe. So, it’s important to know that a reduction in diameter doesn’t necessarily mean reduced flow capacity. The slick material of the CIPP liner more than makes up for the very slight reduction in diameter. Simply put, pipe lining increases flow capacity.

For more information on pipe lining see our pipe lining page.

Pipe Bursting

Sometimes a damaged pipe doesn’t have enough structural integrity for pipe lining. In these cases, we use a trenchless repair method called pipe bursting to break up the old pipe and replace it with a new HDPE pipe that will last up to 100 years.

Pipe bursting pulls the new pipe into the old one, breaks it apart, and then takes its place. This is why it’s called pipe ‘’bursting’’.

Pipe bursting starts off with a sewer camera inspection to make sure the pipe is a candidate for pipe bursting. Then, two 4ft x 4ft access pits are dug and the new HDPE replacement pipe is pulled into the one one, breaking it up. After the new HDPE pipe is in place, a final sewer camera inspection is performed. If everything is in working order, the access points are filled.

For more information on pipe bursting see our pipe bursting page.

If you think you might have a problem with your sewer line, don’t delay. Contact us or call us at (310) 694-5451.

For more information see our pages on trenchless repair techniques, sewer pipe lining, and pipe bursting.

Our Service Area

New Flow Plumbing provides sewer line repair and sewer replacement services to customers within a 20 mile radius of our office at 6718 Katherine Ave Van Nuys, CA 91405 including: