It never fails. You’re off on vacation or holiday, enjoying yourself, let all your stresses drift away, but then it’s time to return home. And what do you return to? The sludge and stink of a busted sewer pipe. Like a lot of homeowners, your first instinct might be to panic—after all, how do you fix something that is buried beneath the ground? How much will it cost? What kind of a headache is it going to cause, not only for you but potentially for your neighbors? Will you forever be known as the person on the block who managed to mess up everyone’s landscaping?
Before you get too worked up, understand that you have more than one option. While digging trenches used to be the only way to get to a broken pipe, another technique now commonly used is pipe relining. This approach requires little digging, making it more cost-effective, and less time-consuming.
What Is Pipe Relining?
Pipe relining allows you to mend a hole from the inside of the pipe itself. A qualified professional inserts a special tube inside the pipe. The outside of the tube is coated with sticky resin. Once it is in the correct place, it is inflated, and the resin cements itself to the original pipe. Thus the hole is patched, and you have a new tube relining the old one.
Pipe Relining Versus Digging A Trench
Replacing sewage pipes can be time consuming and expensive. A trench will have to be dug and all the old pipes removed before new ones can be put in. There is also the cost of fixing your landscaping or potentially even a neighbor’s landscape to consider once the job is done. No matter how you look at it, this will be a long process, and if your pipe is too far gone to be repaired, trenching may be the only option open to you.
With pipe relining, a hole will still have to be dug, but the refining process takes less time than trenching and won’t hurt your landscape. Since you don’t have to replace pipes—you’re strengthening what you already have—the cost should be considerably less, too. Another factor to think about regarding cost is location.
For example, the cost of pipe relining in Sydney sewage pipes may differ from your own based on length or meter of the pipe needed. Depending on what type of relining is being used, your piping may last for the next few decades, which can bring peace of mind for the years to come.
Common culprits of busted pipes are tree roots. Pipe relining helps prevent that problem from happening again since the piping does not hold moisture on its outside surface. Thus it’s a deterrent to pesky roots that tend to grow around or barrel through pipes.
Hopefully, you won’t have ever to experience having to replace a broken pipe, but should you find yourself in that situation, remember to explore all of your options.
