Professional Trenchless Sewer Repair in Houston
Sewer lines aren’t shy about letting you know when they have issues. They send a word in the form of backed-up toilets and tubs, gurgling noises, and the most horrific smells you can imagine. Our drain and sewer pipes take a daily beating while directing our wastewater (and other awfulness) into the city sewer.
Everything that goes down our drains ends up in our sewer pipes. Soap, shampoo residue, dirt and hair from our bathtubs and showers, cooking grease and food waste from our garbage disposals, and let’s not even discuss what comes from our toilets. We ask a lot of our drain and sewer pipes and rarely give them a second thought, until we’re standing in ankle-deep shower water, or worse.
It’s Just a Drain Clog, Right?
In most cases, a sewer backup is merely an inconvenience that can be addressed by a plumber with a motorized snake or by using a hydro-jetting service to remove a blockage. Thousands of gallons of water flow through your home’s drain pipes every day, wearing them away from the inside out. As the plumbing in a house gets older, corrosion starts to set in from decades of use, and leaks become more common.
It’s not just the inside forces that wreak havoc on sewer lines, as tree roots are attracted to them due to the moisture they produce. Tree roots will wrap themselves around the outside of a pipe so tightly that the line is crushed, and the only option the homeowner has is to fix or replace it.
Traditionally, when a sewer line is broken, long trenches along its path must be excavated, starting from the house, and out to the city sewer connection. Anything that lies in the way of a broken sewer line needs to be removed, tearing apart lawns, costly landscaping, driveways, sidewalks, and even home foundations. Instead of taking several days to complete a fully trenched job, dig-free repairs can be done in a single day, reducing labor costs, and the length of the job.
What is Trenchless Sewer Repair?
Occasionally, a product or service comes along with a name that tells you exactly what it’s about, and trenchless sewer line repair is one of those times. It’s no longer necessary to excavate your entire yard to fix or replace your waste pipes, as 90% of the work occurs inside the pipe. The development of the process began in the 1940s and became widely used in commercial plumbing in the 1970s. Only in the last decade has it become prevalent in residential plumbing as costs for the machinery and the materials required have come way down.
The most used pipe re-lining process in residential plumbing is called CIPP for “Cured in Place Pipe.” CIPP employs a chemically treated felt inner lining introduced to the sewer pipe and blown into place with pressurized air. The CIPP process gives you a brand-new sewer line inside of your old sewer lines.
How Does Trenchless Sewer Replacement Work?
There are several stages to a trenchless replacement, starting with a visual inspection of your property. We’re looking for the obvious puddles and muddy areas that indicate a plumbing leak of some kind and looking for sections of your lawn that are greener than the rest of the yard. That greener section of grass is being fertilized by the raw sewage coming out of your home, not a pleasant thought.
Next, we introduce our high-definition snake camera into the pipe, either through a drain or an outdoor sewer cleanout port. Once the damaged section of the pipe is located, a small access hole is dug above the break, and any damaged piping is removed. Before placing the new lining, the entire drainpipe must be thoroughly cleaned, as any debris present can damage the new liner.
After a thorough cleaning, the felt lining is cut to size, treated with an epoxy compound, and fed into the pipe with a motorized snake. Compressed air is blown into the line to expand it to fit the existing pipe’s interior, followed by hot air to speed up the curing process. Once the installation equipment is removed, the access hole is filled in, and the customer has a new sewer lining that will last for decades.
Is Trenchless Cheaper than Trenched?
Compared to the cost of performing a trenched sewer line job, the price of a re-lining can be as much as 75% cheaper. By not having to dig up your entire yard, or replace the existing landscape and concrete fixtures, trenchless repair is a lower-cost option.
Can Trenchless Repair Be Used to Fix a Bellied Sewer Line?
Absolutely! After locating the break in the pipe with the video camera snake, we dig out around the broken section of pipe. The bellied portion of the line is removed, a straight piece of PVC pipe is connected between the loose ends, and the lining is then blown through the pipeline.
Preserve your sidewalks, driveways, and landscaping by having our trenchless sewer service create a new sewer pipe within your existing sewer pipe. For over forty years, Nick’s Plumbing Service has been fixing everything from your leaky faucets to whole house re-pipes.
Call us today. We’re on the Way!
