A sewer main is the connecting pipe from your home's sewer line to the city's main line. A damaged sewer main is a huge problem for a building or home owner which needs to be fixed as soon as possible or the house will be uninhabitable. Sewage repairs do crop up unexpectedly especially in older areas of a city which have older pipes. Older pipes crack, rupture and break under pressure and damage from weather, tree roots or construction nearby. It is a good idea to budget for potential repairs because they may be quite expensive. As a guideline the average cost of a sewer repair in the U.S. is $2,885. When calculating the cost of a sewer repair, the following considerations need to be included.
When you need your sewer repaired, the worst thing you can do is wait. Blockages or breaks in a sewer line are clearly urgent plumbing problems. These breaks or blockages can cause drains to back up, which allows basements and foundations to flood. Trenchless Technology offers a faster, less expensive and environmentally friendly method for replacing and repairing sewer lines.
Traditional Sewer Line Repair - A Time Consuming Project
As pipes age, cracking and blockages cause them to fall apart. While trees are beautiful and beneficial to our environment, the stress caused by a tree’s roots can also destroy the pipes that lie beneath them. Previously, the problems caused by damaged pipes were corrected by digging up and repairing or replacing each section of pipe that was in need of attention. That was before trenchless technology became available.
Before trenchless technology, our team of technicians would spend hours just digging the trench along the pipe that needed to be replaced or repaired. After completing the repair or replacing the pipe, our technicians would then spend several more hours reburying the pipe. Completing a sewer line repair this way requires us to use numerous technicians and expensive heavy equipment. Sadly, it also destroys landscaping and lawns.
Clean it and keep it clean! It seems like such a simple concept but it drove Team PPF and Blue Earth Labs to join forces and start helping municipalities clean their water system infrastructure.
Blue Earth Labs is an analytical company that manufacturers NSF60 approved products for use in drinking water systems. The folks at PPF are available to visit your water or wastewater treatment facility to discuss solutions. With Blue Earth Lab products we can clean the toughest of iron and manganese stains, organic & inorganic buildup, etc.
Team PPF was contacted by Seth McGee, project manager for McGee Construction in Gardiner, ME. McGee Construction was working on a Maine DOT overlay project that included drainage and safety improvements on Route 3 in Augusta.
The plans and specifications of the project called for an existing 24" corrugated metal pipe (CMP) that crossed under Route 3 to be removed and replaced with 24" reinforced concrete pipe (RCP). Route 3 is a heavily trafficked corridor that starts in Augusta and heads east through Belfast, ending in the town of Mount Desert. In most circumstances, removing and replacing a 24" culvert is not a major project, but in this case the culvert at the center line of the road was 20'+ deep. For this culvert to be removed and replaced, there would have been substantial traffic impact, traffic delays, and engineering required to excavate over 20' deep.
