FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
If your sewer line has backed up more than once a year, or even once every couple years, we don’t consider that normal. There’s usually an underlying reason like roots, age, or the wrong pipe material.
We don’t think it’s normal to need regular clean-outs. We’re in the sewer replacement business because the goal is to replace failing lines so you don’t have to keep cleaning them year after year.
A lot of times it’s when the drain cleaner can’t get a snake through the line anymore. When it can’t be opened, that’s usually when people realize it’s broken, collapsed, or failing and it needs to be dug up and fixed.
When the sewer line fails and can’t be opened, the bathrooms are basically closed and nothing drains. People often have to go somewhere else to use the facilities or even get a hotel until it’s fixed.
Yes, it’s mostly about age and material. If your house is in an old neighborhood and still has the original sewer line, eventually somebody is going to have to deal with replacing it.
Orangeburg is a sewer pipe material that’s basically “paper.” It was meant to be temporary, and there are still thousands of those lines in the ground, especially in homes built in the 1950s.
We won’t tie onto a paper pipe. If your line is Orangeburg, repairs are out of the question for us — it has to be replaced.
In our area, any house built in the 1950s has about a 50% chance of having Orangeburg. It’s often either Orangeburg or clay.
Anything built in the last 30 years or so is usually schedule 40 PVC. That material generally doesn’t have the same kinds of problems we see with older pipes.
A lot of times, for us, the camera confirms what we already suspect as soon as it goes in. Every now and then we’ll find the sewer line was already replaced and doesn’t need work, which is always a nice surprise.
A lot of times, no. Water lines often just burst without warning. The main time you can predict it is if you already know you have an older material like galvanized pipe and you know it’ll need replacement someday.
We don’t offer repairs very often because most people only want to go through this once. The exceptions are cases like a PVC line that got hit and broken, or a break at the foundation where we can replace the pipe through the wall and tie onto the pipe in the yard.
We can’t speak for every company, but we’ve noticed big outfits sometimes bring a lot of people to a sewer line job. We’re a small operation, and after doing this for about 30 years, we can often get the work done in less time.
Not always. Sometimes, depending on the street or neighborhood, it might get that high, but most of the time it’s not as much as people think.
Every now and then someone tries to dig up and fix their own sewer line, and that’s usually not a good idea. And if you’re plunging without realizing there’s a floor drain somewhere else, you can end up pushing sewage up through another part of the house.