Sewer Line Repair and Inspections

Sewer lines do their job quietly, until they don’t, but sewer line inspection is a great way to flag up small issues before they become catastrophic. Pima County, AZ plumbing specialist will be able to tell you if sewer line repair is something you need right away and how long you can potentially wait.

Sewer Line Inspection

You’ll know it’s time for an inspection when you notice things like gurgling drains, sluggish toilet flushes, or odors. The crew will arrive in a well-marked van and bring a sewer camera rig, a locator wand, and a hydro-jet. They’ll ask you about any recent backups you’ve had, yard depressions that have developed, or nearby tree plantings.

The camera inspection process is the gold standard for inspecting these lines. No digging is required. A technician will first feed a flexible, high-resolution camera mounted onto a fiber optic cable down your sewer line. The camera is quite small and transmits live video to our monitor. As it does, it records the depth and distance traveled and gives 360° views of the pipe. As we go along, we will note places where water is pooling or where there’s a break in the line, and then we will map the entire line, which is typically 75 to 100 feet long and runs to the city sewer tap line or your septic tank.

Common Inspection Findings

One of the most common things for us to see are tree roots bursting into your pipe or even just creating initial hairline cracks. Another common issue is bellied or sagging sections where soil settlement has created a dip. It’s also very common for us to see years of cooking oil solidified along the sides, and if you have clay or Orangeburg pipes, then these often get flattened under pressure over time.

Sewer Line Repair vs. Replacement

If you’ve just got some minor root intrusion or a small blockage of grease, hydro-jetting could be the answer. This is where we blast water under high pressure to scour the pipe clean. We can then also send down a chemical root killer, but if you are seeing root issues, that’s going to be a temporary fix, and you will likely soon need a bigger repair.

If the whole thing has to be replaced, we’ll have to mark all the utilities, dig up the trench with a machine, replace the old pipe with new, possibly put in a new gravel bed, and then restore your landscaping. This is necessary in some situations, but trenchless repair is a new option that often works well. There are a couple of options here. Sometimes, we can do pipe lining, where a tube is inserted into the old pipe. This requires very minimal digging. With pipe bursting, we use hydraulics to fracture the old pipe outward while pulling a new HDPE plastic pipe through that same path. This is often the way you want to go if you need to install a bigger pipe.

To learn more about the options and schedule an inspection for your sewer pipe, contact us at Economy Plumbing Service, LLC in Tucson, AZ.

Tags: hydrojetting, sewer camera, sewer line
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