How to Repair a Residential Sewer Line Without Trenches

When a pipe bursts in the sewer line outside your home, the last thing you want is an invasive crew to rip up the street and leave you with potholes and dust. Thankfully, trenchless sewer repair exists. Here’s how to repair a residential sewer line without trenches.

Open-Trenched Sewer Repair

The traditional method of sewer repair requires a crew to dig up the earth around the burst pipe. This involves creating a large trench in the ground that is refilled when the work ends.

On average, 70 percent of your sewer repair bill comes from excavation and ground replacement, making this option costly and highly intrusive. Unless you’re incredibly confident in the repair team’s ability to return the yard and street to their former glory, this is a risky option.

Trenchless Sewer Repair

Trenchless sewer repair uses the burst or deteriorated pipe to your advantage. Once the crew digs access holes on either side of the pipe, they will install a flexible epoxy-saturated liner inside the old line, which hardens to form a new pipe inside the original.

When hardened, this new pipe blocks out any structural problems the old pipe had and remains sealed. New liners typically have a lifespan of 50 years, so you won’t have to worry about additional repairs any time soon.

Benefits of Trenchless

The main benefit of trenchless pipe repair is that you won’t know any work was done. The yard and the street remain undisturbed during the process, and traffic can pass through without problems. You’ll also enjoy a lower cost because trenchless options involve less time and labor. With a 50-year life expectancy, you won’t be on the hook for charges related to further damage, either.

Now that you know how to repair a residential sewer line without trenches, enlist the help of horizontal directional drilling experts to fix your sewer line without ruining your landscaping.