What is Trenchless Sewer Repair?

Trenchless Sewer Repair?

For the longest time, plumbers who needed access to faulty sewer lines had to dig through manicured lawns, tree roots, and sidewalks to repair sewer lines. It was a labor-intensive activity that made it impossible for homeowners to relax at home.  Additionally, it usually required landscaping work afterward. While it got the job done, this method was way too labor and time-consuming, forcing plumbers in Orange County to develop a  more effective way to fix underground pipes.

Enter trenchless sewer repair, a minimally-invasive technique that repairs damaged drainage lines without any major excavation work. Although the method has been around since the 1940s, it was only until the 1970s when structural pipe lining was introduced that it took off. With this method, plumbers can repair or replace a sewer pipe without trenching, making the entire process less intrusive, more affordable, and quicker.

Have you been searching for trenchless sewer repair in Orange County, CA?  Contact Do It Right Plumbing today for trenchless sewer repair. But before you do, let’s talk about the different types of trenchless sewer repair.

Pipe Bursting

As the name suggests, pipe bursting involves breaking or bursting the old pipe while replacing it with a new high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe. To do this, a plumbing company in Orange, CA, will pull an expander or bursting head through the old pipe. Small enough to fit through most pipes, the bursting head fractures the old pipe as it is pulled through. The new HDPE pipe is connected to the back of a bursting head and an expander. First, the expander head fractures the old pipe. Then, the bursting head breaks it apart. Finally, the new pipe is laid in its place.

Alongside the expander and bursting heads, plumbers in Orange County like Do It Right Plumbing use a pulling machine, pulling rods, a retaining device, and a hydraulic power pack for the procedure. A small access hole is dug at both ends of the pipe, and the pulling machine is placed in the receiving pit. Using the pulling rods and powered by the hydraulic power pack, the pulling machine pulls the expander head and the new pipe attached to the rusting head in place.

Slip Lining 

This method of subterranean pipe repair differs greatly from a pipe bursting. Also known as pipelining or cured-in-place pipe (CIPP), slip lining is one of the oldest trenchless pipe repair methods. Slip lining involves creating a new pipe inside the old one. This is done with a plumber near you threading a new smaller pipe into the older or ‘host’ pipe. The ends are then sealed by grout, a heavy seal that doesn’t break down easily, creating one solid line between the old pipe and the new entrants. CIPP is slightly different; it involves introducing a flexible felt liner soaked in a mixture of epoxy and resin into the old pipe. The felt liner conforms to the pipe’s shape, and once it is placed, hot air is forced through the pipe to harden the felt.

A More Modern Method 

Although both slip lining and CIPP use the same concept, CIPP is the more modern method. Therefore, it requires smaller access ports and less work overall. CIPP is more flexible and thinner, meaning you won’t lose a lot of pipe diameter. On the other hand, slip lining involves the introduction of a new pipe and can reduce the diameter of the pipe by a large margin. Do It Right Plumbing advises industrial sites or homes with very high water pressure to use CIPP to prevent burst pipes.

Spray Lining and Burst Coating

Although both these methods are quite similar to CIPP, they differ in one major way. While CIPP is structural, it uses felt or fiberglass liners, sprays lining, and brush coating coat the host pipe’s entire structure with epoxy, flexible polymer, or other resin. Flexible resins are usually used in high rise buildings as the rigid epoxy may crack when the building shifts. The resin is either sprayed or brushed onto the inside of the damaged pipe.

Brush coating and spray lining are great at addressing corrosion. Additionally, they address rust in cast iron pipes and eliminating sewer gas from leaky joints. Lastly, they can be used on pipes as small as 15 inches in diameter.