Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Rental Repair: Skewer My Sewer


As with all rental properties, they need repair from time to time.  As a landlord, you hope that the big ticket items are in good shape.  Roof, plumbing, and electrical are systems which need to work in order for you to be in business.

Recently I had the plumbing on one of my rental properties go bad. The home was constructed in 1911.   The main sewer line leading out of the home had backed up several times in a year.  I called a technician and we scoped the line.  Here is what we found:


 
Those white concentric rings you see in the top photo are joints in the clay pipe used for the sewer line.  The reason we can see them is that they have been infilled with roots.  Lots of them.  The bottom photo shows just how much they can grow.

Given how many problems were were having with the line, I was not surprised but I was still disappointed.  It meant we needed to replace the line.

One of the problems for us putting in a new line the traditional was that it would require taking out some huge 100 year old trees in our park strip.  It also would require cutting all the way to the opposite side of the street where the city sewer main sits.

Fortunately, I called Jay at Utah Pipebursting and he had the perfect solution.


The pipebursting method breaks apart the existing pipe where it sits in the ground via an auger.  At the same time the pipe is being broken apart, a new solid piece plastic pipe is pulled through the opening.  Instead of trenching scores of feet through the yard and street, the pipebursting method just requires holes to be dug at the end points.


In our case, the sewer line zig zagged back and forth beneath the home.  It required that a hole also be dug in the basement as well.


The entire replacement took about 12 hours to complete.  We patched the hole in the basement and the property now has a functional sewer line.  Whew!

If  you are contemplating replacing an old sewer line, contact Jay at Utah Pipebursting.  He can be reached at 801-920-3178.  I highly recommend them and it is highly affordable.

2 comments:

Randy said...

Jeremy, do you have any control over what ads come up at the top of your blog? I was wondering about the ad for girls?

Jeremy Peterson said...

Randy, the site is non-monetized so there should be no ads appearing at all. If you can send me a screenshot of what you are seeing that would help me figure out why that is happening. It shouldn't be happening at all.